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Chapter Text

Spring 1886

There is an island.

A day's journey from the cape through rough black water would allow a ship to moor off the rocky shallows of its windswept coast.

Held in the jagged, wave-broken fingers of rock is the small, stalwart village of Eldensmouth, soaked in mist from the bedrock foundations to the tips of the tattered snapping flags. It's an old place and so reverently treaded by its sparse population chained back in generations to the original settlers themselves, with just the occasional glint of newcomers in the midst.

Lounging comfortably in the throne room of the Buried Church, Royce King tips the coagulated remnants of the goblet down his scarred throat. From the corner of his eye, he catches the turn of the powerful lighthouse beam. With a clatter and drag of metal, the cast goblet skitters across the hard floor and is pinned to a stop beneath the foot of his second in command, Marcus.

"I believe it's time, Mr. King."

The priest rises as the doors blow open with the wind. He takes in the view and likes what he sees.

Here stands an island neglected by maps, operating smoothly without the touch of a mainland hierarchy. The Brotherhood provides, it always has. It endures.

Through the sanctuary, the priest is joined in peals by the Brothers, their black cloaks whispering over the dampened streets. A familiar chorus of slamming doors and thrown deadbolts rings out from both sides of the street as they press forward to the docks.

The priest lifts his hand, and without word, a half-dozen men break formation and disappear into the dark forest to retrieve it.

Marcus works a lump of tallow in his hands, dubious. "You're certain?"

The priest grins and leaves him with his doubts. It's his duty after all. A counterbalance that has allowed them Eldensmouth for as long as they've had it. And they're about to have so much more.

Far below, metal crashes into stone. The sound echoes violently throughout the underground cavern. A young girl lurches awake, shrieking into the iron clamped around her. Pain blooms from the exertion as she cowers into a damp corner.

The cage from the sky. The very one that lowered her down here so many months ago. The door swings open with a creak. Get in, they goad her. The black cloaks, the coldbloods. The chain attached to the top of the cage rattles. Get in.

…

…

1.

Isabella Swan trips quite spectacularly down the back steps of the tavern. Her gangly arms windmill out from her sides as she stumbles well out into the street before finally losing all hope of balance and landing in a messy heap on the dew-damp cobblestone.

"Bella the Great and Terrible!" a familiar voice booms from the front of the general store.

From her sprawled position in the middle of the street, she lifts a scraped palm in a wave. "Morning, Mr. Newton," she mumbles, trying to find her feet again. "Have you seen my dad?"

"Not since this morning at the docks. He was cooking up something with old Waylon for the Angel, though." The shop owner nods out toward the woods. "He might be out that way."

Bella brushes her stinging hands off on her trousers. "Thanks!" she calls over her shoulder as she breaks into a run for the treeline.

"You be careful now, little lady!"

.

Lightning flashes over Eldensmouth as Bella cuts through the trees, tripping on ivy and overgrown brakenferns. The soft dirt caves beneath her shoes, damp always from the mist and dribbling rain showers that never seem to let up completely.

Waylon's house is on the storm-torn far side of the island. He's a ship captain and an old friend of her father's. And a great teller of tall tales. Sea monsters and gold chests and pirates on the horizon. Horrible, child-eating monsters sleeping in this very forest. Maybe she believed him when she was little, but she's twelve now, and not so easily tricked. Not by old Waylon anyway.

Raindrops begin to beat down through the dense leaves of the forest and sprinkle on her head as she stops to catch her breath against a mossy trunk. The wind picks up and howls around the sharp rocks in the distance. The old trees around her sway and groan as their leaves are pulled in a violent hiss.

Bella pays nature's aggression little mind as she tries to orient herself. Maybe she should have taken the long way on the beaten path, but there's almost no fun in that. And on a rainy rock this small, she'll take all the adventure she can get. Besides, she grew up playing in these woods with Mr. Newton's rotten kids and Angela from the library. She knows every inch of this place, just about.

The direction she chooses takes her to a small glade tangled with wild grass and pale bluets. Through a gap in the trees, she can glimpse the black high tide barrelling into the rocks, though she can't imagine how she got so close to the cliffs. She wasn't that turned around, was she?

Lost in her own forest. Mike Newton was right, her internal compass really is busted.

She picks a few leaves out of her hair as she crosses the glade to the steep trail. What she needed to ask her father can wait. She's always liked the view from Levin's Point. The birds nesting on the rocks, the dark water that betrays no secrets of its depths, the fog that whites out everything else. And the lighthouse.

The air around her hums curiously and the little stray hairs that have pulled loose from her braid float upward on their own hidden current. Strange, she thinks, doesn't that mean-

A bright bolt of lightning strikes a tree immediately to her left, raining sparks down around her. Bella yelps and topples over backward, arms flailing helplessly like broken compass needles. She hits the ground so hard, all her air leaves her.

Perhaps if she were more observant, she would have noticed the disruption in the soft soil beneath her, the growing fractures, the funneling. Though it hardly matters. She hears the echoing crack. Her stomach drops as she tries to scramble to her feet. But it's too late. The ground crumbles away beneath her and she's falling. Again.

Not weightless at all, but very surely leaden and fated for impact.

She closes her eyes.

.

She…opens her eyes.

Pain floods her right shoulder as she comes to. She sits up and clutches it with a reedy groan. She must have hit it pretty hard on the way down.

The way down.

Bella blinks a few times and tries to see anything beyond the dull haze of pain. It's dark where she's landed and heavy with the scent of wet rocks and the salt-tang of the sea. She tips her head back and gasps at the weak light streaming in through a small hole. Just big enough for a girl to fall through.

The caves. Beneath the Point. She read about them in the library, but they've been closed off since her father was a kid. They're supposed to be dangerous. They flood with the tides. She can't stay here. There's got to be a way out.

A pebble drops a handful of feet away, and Bella's head snaps up. "Hello?" she calls, feeling a bit silly. "Is someone there?"

Of course, there's nobody down here thirty feet underground in this strange cavern. She climbs to her feet and winces with every little movement. Another glance up tells her she's lucky to be alive right now. That was one hell of a drop.

"Yeah," she mutters to herself. "Bella the Great and Terrible." Her words reverberate through the chamber.

A breath of laughter echoes back.

Bella's heart goes still.

.

There is a girl.

Pressed into the darkest corner of the stone cavern, eyeing her carefully. Her arms are braced against the stone walls.

"Hey," Bella says. She takes a step toward the girl but stops dead when the girl hisses at her like an animal, fingers scratching at the wall as if trying to back farther into it.

Bella holds both her hands up, ignoring the hot pain spreading down from her shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. Did you fall too?"

Her blank stare is accentuated when her wide eyes catch the faint light from the surface and reflect it right back. It reminds Bella of the quick white arrows the lighthouse beam throws against the mirror in her bedroom.

She squints, taking in the cavern now that her vision is adjusting. It's smaller than she first assumed. Less of a sprawling system of sea caves and more a single deep pocket in the rock about twice the size of her bedroom in the back of the tavern and braced on all sides with heavy wooden beams.

Looking up again, she notices another hole in the ceiling, this one bigger but obscured by something large and swaying in the still air of the cave. Some metal shines and an old chain creaks.

Bella rolls her good shoulder, dropping her gaze back to the corner. "Where should-"

The girl looks up at something over Bella's shoulder and rushes at her without warning. Bella's nerves ignite with white panic as the girl knocks her back onto the ground and pulls a dirty blanket over her.

A strained snarl rips from the girl's throat as the heavy metal door Bella hadn't noticed on the far wall flies open. Bella holds her breath and peers through the worn material of the blanket, just barely able to see what's going on.

A man walks inside and pulls the door shut behind him. "Get back, now," he warns as if talking to an untrained dog.

The girl leans over Bella, shielding her from him as he passes. She hisses again, and from her spot beneath the protective cage of her body, Bella can see that there's something on her face, a bulky metal contraption over her mouth and down around her throat.

The man sets his lantern on a crate and surveys the hole in the ceiling and the mess of dirt and leaves that made the fall with her. The bottom of his black cloak rustles over the stone and Bella's blood turns to ice. The Brotherhood. She never sees them far from the church unless it's Collection Day. Just what did she fall into?

"What was it?" another voice asks through the small grate in the door.

"Just a little cave-in," the man says, sweeping his eyes over the rest of the small chamber.

"Must've ruffled its feathers, though. Hah, get it?"

"Just shut up, Felix," the man says as he waits for his partner to unlock the door to let him out. "Go report it to Marcus anyway. I'll check again in a few minutes just to be sure."

Bella waits a few seconds before she slips from beneath the blanket. Her heart is stuttering in her chest, and her nerves are so jangled she can barely feel the pain in her shoulder anymore. Possibly the only good thing going for her at the moment.

When she looks up, the girl is stalking back and forth on the other side of the room, shooting occasional glares toward the door he disappeared through.

In the light from the left-behind lantern, Bella can see her completely. She's young, like Bella but pale and gaunt and dressed in what looks like an old tablecloth with holes cut for her head and arms. Her blond hair is tangled and unkempt. Like… Like she's been down here for a long time. The strange lock on her jaw glints as she paces, and Bella swallows as her brain begins to catch up.

And there's one more thing.

She has wings.

.

"He's coming back," Bella says.

The girl nods and turns slightly, her large silvery-brown wings dragging heavily behind her. They're tied together with rope and appear to be broken in places. Stray feathers litter the edges of the cave.

"What do we do?"

A pale finger points toward the only door.

"What about you?"

She shakes her head, a solemn and scared flash in her light-trap eyes.

"Are you okay? You look hurt." Bella lifts a tentative hand to touch the curve of her wing. The girl turns quickly, and Bella's hand lands on the cool skin of her shoulder instead. At the touch, her strange eyes well with tears, and Bella yanks her hand back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

The girl jerks her head away and flinches with the movement. She touches the rough metal over her mouth and shuts her eyes against the pain as it curls her spine. A mangled sob breaks through her teeth and rasps through the tracks in the lock.

With stinging eyes, Bella rests her hands lightly on the back of her tangled blond head as the girl bows forward, whimpering quietly into Bella's patch-softened shirt. "It's okay," she whispers. "It's all alright."

Behind them, the metal door clangs open again.

.

Bella is barely aware of the hand around her upper arm and the winding path they take through the caves and back to the surface. She hardly even registers the cobblestone beneath her feet half an hour later or the familiar sight of her father's tavern back in town.

The man releases her arm and bends to look her in the teary eyes. "Not a word of what you saw," he says sternly. "To anyone."

"I-" She comes back to herself then in a rush of fury and fallen tears. Her hands ball into fists at her sides. "You have her trapped-

"Not a word," he repeats in a harsh voice, but his eyes are blue pleading things like he doesn't understand it either. "For your safety-"

"But-"

"-and hers."

Bella shuts her mouth and nods, glaring without sight as he takes off briskly down the street.

Inside the tavern, it's warm and hazy with cigar smoke. The thick scent of cooling stew makes her stomach growl. She's somehow home on time. It's almost absurd. No one would even know to ask where she's been.

Charlie is pouring old Waylon a drink behind the bar. He smiles when he sees her. "There she is."

Mr. Newton raises his stein clear across the room. "Bella the Great and Terrible!"

.

.

Three days later, a heavy knock wakes Bella before the sun. She isn't stupid. Charlie taught her to never open the door when he isn't there. But when she peeks through the curtain, a bead of scattered emotion has her tearing the door open.

It's him.

The guard who led her by the arm through the maze-like cave system to the surface and delivered her to The Roaming Angel. He never breathed a word about the girl in the cavern the whole trip out.

"Morning, Miss Swan," he says, taking a few steps back toward the street.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, half-hiding behind the door. "I- I didn't tell anyone."

"I know that. It's just…" He looks over his shoulder at the empty street for a moment. "Would you… like to see her again?"

Bella's heart jumps in her chest, but it smacks into her father's careful warnings of the men in black cloaks. Don't trust a single one of them. They'd rather see your blood than your smile any day. She narrows her eyes at the guard, paying attention for the first time. He's maybe only a few years older than her. A kid himself, really, and drowning in his hand-me-down robe. Probably, his only job is to watch that metal door.

Her hand tightens around the doorknob. "Explain," she says in her best gruff imitation of her father.

"Well," he says, shifting on his feet. He shakes his head, blond curls falling over his forehead. "I guess you've seen her, so I can just come right out with it. She's been ill. She won't eat even when I- uh, unlock her." He gestures to his jaw. "And it's not like I can bring her a doctor because- Well, you know. And I shouldn't care at all except she's real important, it seems like. So wouldn't they want me to do whatever I can to help her?"

Bella stares at him, a little lost. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

"See, I think she liked you when you fell in like you did. At least, I never saw her so close to someone without clawing their eyes out. So maybe if you brought her the food, she'd actually eat something." He holds his hands up and quickly adds, "It'd be like a job, of course. I'll pay you out of my pocket for the trouble."

His eyes are lit up a little, his master plan. Hiring a twelve-year-old to do half his work. But Bella feels the pull all the same. Her thoughts have neither slowed nor strayed from the strange girl for a moment since she crashed through that ceiling. And with every ache of her bruised limbs, she remembers the girl's sad, metallic gaze; her tangled blond hair; her wings, tattered and bound together, forced to drag after her when she walks.

"No one will know where I am," she says. "How do I trust you?"

He seems to wither at that. Embarrassed in some way. He pats his pockets and pulls out a thin and wickedly serrated dagger. "Um. You can have this."

She takes it from him and holds the blade up in the sunlight. "And what? I'm supposed to fight you off with this?" She stabs the air experimentally, not really hating the feeling of the knife in her hand.

The boy shrugs. "I think the idea is that you won't have to. And it's just me keeping watch from now on. Felix got a new assignment."

Bella considers that. "What do I call you?"

"Jasper. But my friends call me Jas."

She turns the small dagger in her hands. It bears the mark of the church on the hilt. She swallows. "What is she?"

Jasper's face turns somber. His blue eyes dart from hers. "I don't know."

.

Jasper presses a lump of wax into her hand. They're just outside the heavy metal door, and Bella almost can't believe the chill in the unmoving air down here. It's wet too. And slippery. She had to frantically grab onto Jasper's arm about a dozen times on the way down here.

"What's this for?" she asks, squeezing the wax.

"Your ears. Trust me. Once I unlock her jaw- You'll see."

"You?"

"Well, yeah."

Bella shakes her head. "Give me the key."

"I don't think that's-"

"The key," she repeats with her hand outstretched, palm up. "I saw her last time. She's scared of you."

"You think that was scared? She almost attacked me when I tried to get you out."

"That is scared, Jasper."

A slow frown moves across his face. "I guess you're right." He pulls the key's chain from his neck and hands it over. "Just be careful, okay?"

She nods once and tightens her grip around the handle of the bucket of water she stopped to fill outside of Mr. Newton's shop and carried all the way down here. The wax squishes into the key in her other sweaty hand.

She pushes the door open.

.

A shadow moves in the darkest corner as Bella steps foot inside the chamber, and an automatic warning hiss cuts through the silence.

Uncertain what to do, Bella stands perfectly still in the light from the oil lamps. Just scrawny, non-threatening schoolkid Bella Swan.

"Remember me?" she tries when she sees some movement out from the corner.

Recognition stiffens her long limbs. Mercury-silver eyes blink at her, unbelieving. And then she bolts across the room, wings dragging behind her with a hollow rustle. She throws her arms around Bella's sore shoulders, leaning fully into a hug that staggers Bella back a few feet trying to keep them upright.

"Hello, again," Bella says, smiling through her surprise and the unexpected tightness of the embrace. "I came in through the door this time."

The girl wraps her hands around Bella's biceps and leans back to look at her face, trembling with something Bella can't quite name. Then she smothers her in another hug, refusing all of Bella's attempts to pull free and show her what she brought with her.

Bella laughs and lets the water bucket drop to the ground with a thud and a small splash. She hugs the girl back, the cold metal of the lock burning against her cheek, but for the first time in three days, her chest feels light.

"I have the key," she whispers.

The hug slowly loosens as the girl pulls away, light eyes curious. When Bella holds up the little key, they flash with interest. She touches the metal over her face and trembles once more when Bella nods.

"Can you show me?"

She gathers her ratty hair away from the back of her neck and leans down a bit so Bella can reach the keyhole.

Bella's fingers shake a little, but she manages the lock with a simple, solid turn. The contraption loosens and falls into the girl's waiting hands. She sets it gingerly on one of the crates by the door and coughs a few times with a hand to her throat. When she looks up, she smiles brilliantly, jaw blue with bruises.

"Are you okay?"

The girl nods, still silent it seems.

Bella gestures to the bag at her side. "Well, I brought you some-"

She squeaks. The most heartrendingly happy noise Bella has ever heard, she can't remember what she was saying or thinking or doing, really. And as the sound echoes endlessly through the small cavern, it layers and lengthens, a note stolen straight from heaven's gates. It drills into her head, that sound, playing even as the cavern quiets, building on itself in the chamber of her skull.

She rocks forward on her feet, lulled. And then it sours and decays as it rocks around her head. Red hazes Bella's vision and fire shoots down the paths of her nerves. Pain becomes the weather. Dizzied, she doubles over, a thin drip of blood from her nose.

Distantly, she hears the clatter of metal. She wrenches her gaze up and glimpses the girl through her narrowing vision. Her heart stutters at the sight of her desperately fumbling with the jaw lock, trying to put it back on. She grabs Bella's hand with the key and nods vigorously at her. Her strange eyes are watery and panicked.

With considerable effort and harshly gritted teeth, Bella straightens herself out and reaches up, easing the lock away from the girl's face, now wet with tears.

"No," she says through the last few excruciating echoes. "I'm not going to do that. Not until I have to leave, I guess. I want to be honest."

The girl nods. She reaches up and wipes her thumb over Bella's lip to clear the blood.

"It's… your voice?" Bella asks, still trying to get her head back on right. There's still some kind of buzzing feeling in the back of her head. "But what about just air?"

A head tilt and puzzled silver eyes.

"You can whisper, right?"

"You can whisper, right?" she mimics with a proud kind of grin.

Bella waits for the pain, finds it lacking, and smiles to match.

.

She eats.

Jasper had thrown together her standard meal which is apparently a tough block of bread and whatever's left from the prior day's fish market. No wonder she wasn't eating. There hasn't been a decent catch in weeks. It's a good thing Bella had the good sense to bring her some vegetable stew from the tavern. And the last of her Christmas caramels.

Bella sits on the blanket with her as she slurps, pausing every few seconds to pluck out a chunk of carrot and place it into Bella's open palm.

"My dad says they're good for your eyes."

The girl makes a face but takes an orange circle back and chews it before diving back into the stew ravenously. Bella reaches a curious hand out and traces the air above the silver-brown curve of her wing. In the light from the oil lamps Jasper set up from them, she can really see the damage the ropes have caused to them. Her fingertips brush a frayed feather. The girl goes a bit stiff but doesn't seem to mind much.

Water drips from the rough ceiling, but aside from the steady plink into the dark pool collected in the sloped corner farthest from the door, it's silent down here.

"Do you have a name?" Bella asks, and the girl looks up, confused. "I'm Bella."

"Bella," she breathes out. "Bellllllllla."

Bella laughs.

She laughs too, but it's something so much more when she does it. Bella leans forward with it, pulled by the sweetness of the sound. The girl frowns and goes back to her food.

With a shake of her head, Bella comes back to herself, glad that she was able to at all. She understands now, the wax Jasper pressed into her hand. She glances over at it on top of the crate beside the jaw lock and swallows, forming then a resolve that she will stand by for many years to come.

.

Reluctantly, Bella realigns the brace of the lock to her blotted jawline, snaps the contraption closed around her neck, and turns the key.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

The girl, the nameless girl, gives a short nod of understanding, but the sorrow in her eyes is heavy on them both.

"I'll see you soon. I promise."

Bella knocks three times on the solid metal door and waits for Jasper to open up.

"Have fun?" he asks as the door swings open. She really could poke him with his own knife. If she wanted to. But maybe she should be happy. He's obviously breaking about a hundred Brotherhood rules bringing her down here like this.

"Yes," she says, but stops when she feels a hand close on her shoulder.

She turns and the girl is staring at her, that same weighty sadness interrupted by a flash of something else. She reaches over her shoulder and plucks a long brown feather. A gift, Bella realizes.

Bella tucks it into her shirt pocket, all the while mentally scanning herself. She already left her with a handful of caramels (that made her eyes so wide when she tasted one), a hairbrush, and a thick pair of socks. But it's not quite right. None of this is or even could be, but…

She runs a hand through her hair and rips out a few strands, handing them over with a sheepish grin.

The girl takes them delicately, awed, perhaps more by the gesture, but the wonder in her eyes makes Bella feel warm inside like hot cider in the dead of winter. And as the girl disappears through the closing crack in the door, Bella knows deep in her heart that she will do everything in her power to make this right.

.

.

Waves slam the sharp rocks beyond Levin's Point, rain falls in heavy rivulets, and for Bella Swan, the grey dawn over sleepy Eldensmouth grows ever familiar.

By the end of the first week, Bella is already up and waiting for Jasper by the door when he comes to escort her. She fills a basket with leftovers from the tavern. Charlie thinks she's about to hit a growth spurt, she's taking so much to eat. The kids from the village try to find the place she hides from them having lost the weakest link of their Red Rover chains.

And every morning, she is greeted with the square force of the winged girl's hugs for a few seconds before she pulls away to poke through Bella's basket and her pockets for candies. Bella shares with her what joy she can before Jasper takes her back up to the surface long after the sun rises.

At night, she dreams of strong wings gliding across a powder blue sky. Shine with the sun, disappear over the horizon. Live on forever.

Chapter Text

Summer 1886

Torrential rain beats down on the shoulders of the Brothers as their boots dig into the soggy earth looking for some leverage against the cart they've been tasked with delivering to the very top of Levin's Point.

Felix wipes his sleeve across his brow in a short moment of breath before he really throws his weight into it. The ropes securing the cage creak with the harshness of the angle, and through the slipping cover, he glimpses the creature huddled against the bars furthest from them.

He's seen it before, unlike most of the Brothers. He used to guard the wretched thing on the morning shift with Jasper. The thick scars cut into his face flare with ghostly pain when it turns its head. More than anyone, he knows not to trust the shine in its childlike eyes.

Below, the people of Eldensmouth are locked snugly in their homes against the wind and rain and all-around damning anchor of a stormy night. If they only knew what sacrifices were made to give them the luxury.

The steep crawl to the top takes nearly an hour, and as the mud-caked wheels slow to a stop at the beacon, the Brothers let out an exhale that curls over Levin's Point like another layer of fog.

At the edge of the cliff, Royce King turns and nods to Marcus who deals away with the panting Brothers with a single look. They shuffle off back down the path in a dark cluster of soaked hair and scowls.

"The window is closing," Marcus notes to which the priest only cracks a hellish grin. He yanks the covering from the cage and casts it aside, reveling for perhaps the hundredth time in his greatest of possessions. How fortunate was he years ago, desperate for profit on the ocean tides to come upon an island of blood and pale bone; deserted but for a fledgling child in a nest?

"Don't you know?" Royce shouts over the wax crammed in both their ears. He grips one of the cage's rough metal bars. Inside, the creature strains away from him, eyes glowing brighter than the lighthouse beam. "There is no window anymore. Not for us."

…

…

2.

A birdcage.

It comes to Bella as she's walking home from her afternoon lessons at the library. The shape beyond the glow of the oil lamps. Hanging at the top of the chamber and rocking on an old brown chain is a birdcage.

Like the kind in her books, drawn into the background pictures of mansions. Except much larger.

She swallows and clutches her reader closer to her chest as she walks down the sidewalk, feeling eyes on her. She ducks into Mr. Newton's shop just as the church's doors swing open and spill out black cloaks onto the street.

Mr. Newton pulls her away from the window and turns the bolt on the door. "Go on in the back with Michael and Denny. Just for a bit," he says, and she can hear the conjured note in his voice.

Bella nods and slips into the backroom with the boys. They're calmly playing cards for marbles. She's known these boys all her life, and any other day, they'd be beating each other over the head and screaming about it. But the Brotherhood is out tonight, and they know better.

She thinks of the girl below the rock. Who locks the door for her? Who keeps the Brotherhood away?

Not her, she thinks, desperation growing in her chest. Stay away from her.

.

The sun sets in slow beams of darkening orange as Bella sits in a corner of the store's backroom watching the Newton brothers pretend to be invested in their games. Worry hunches her spine as she counts the seconds.

It feels like hours before Mr. Newton tells them it's safe to go outside. Bella tears out of the little store, mindless of the loose pages flying from her reader as she goes.

Jasper's watch ended hours ago. She wouldn't make it ten feet into those caves without him. She's checked before. They're crawling with blackcloaks once the sun goes down.

The Brotherhood, the monsters that stalk the streets at night. The church stands at the head of the town with red stained-glass eyes. Always, always watching.

Her lungs burn as she shoves her way through the thick forest. She can't go to the entrance to the caves, but there's one spot she knows they won't have guards posted.

She slides to a stop in the middle of the glade, searching the ground for the cave-in that swallowed her up that first day. They were meant to fix it, but thank god that to the Brotherhood grunts, that only consisted of covering it with a few uprooted bushes.

Sharp thorns bite into her palms as she tears them away and peers inside. All this time and she doesn't have a name to call out into the dark cavern.

"Are you there?" she tries, straining to keep from shouting. "It's me. It's Bella."

Only silence comes from the small vent in the rock, and Bella feels frustration mingling with her worry.

The girl can't speak. And it's too dark to see anything.

Some dirt crumbles beneath her hands and falls into the void below. She tries again. "If you're down there…throw a rock at me!"

A few seconds pass, and Bella's heart starts to sizzle in her stomach acid.

Then suddenly, pain blooms in her forehead as something beams off her skull with a sharp snick. She falls back into a sitting position and rubs her head, laughing or crying. Maybe quite a bit of both.

"Okay," she says, leaning over the gap. "I'll see you tomorrow."

.

.

"What's it for?" Bella asks as a bit of the rock step crumbles beneath her foot. For months she's been taking these stairs, and she still can't find her feet.

Jasper grabs her arm before she can slip down the rest of the winding descent. "What's what for?"

She gives him a hard look. "The cage hanging in the cavern. What's it for?"

"I'm not really supposed-"

"Jasper."

He sighs and lets go of her arm. "It's for when they move her."

"Move her? Where?"

"When they take her out."

.

.

Days later, Bella carefully unwinds the length of rough rope from around the battered remains of her wings. The girl winces but keeps her eyes on the backs of her hands against the wall until the rope falls to the ground completely.

"Is that better?" Bella asks, and a sudden burst of wind topples her over an ill-placed crate. She lands with a graceless flop on the pile of blankets that serves as a bed. A gentle sorry floats on the air as she peels herself off the floor and peers over the crate.

The girl is doubled over herself, breathing hard, broken wings hanging limply at her sides. The gold from the lamplight catches the silver hidden in the dark feathers. Her eyes glow in reflection as her face screws up in pain.

Bella pats her on the shoulder and then bends her head down next to hers. "Old Waylon, he has a tropical bird. Like a pirate."

The girl looks up in confusion. It's been about four months of coming down here almost every morning, but Bella figured it out a long time ago. She doesn't have much of a grasp of the language, but she must be some kind of brilliant for picking up the bit she uses to communicate.

Bella brushes her fingers across some feathers, taking care to be gentle. "Maybe he knows how to fix them."

"Fix." It comes out on a hiss of a breath. She grabs a handful of Bella's shirt. "Yes, you."

.

Waylon thinks she's got a bird in a shoebox underneath her bed.

It's almost the truth.

.

.

Jasper's bright grin melts off his face when Bella raps on the metal door and dark feathers fill his vision.

Bella braces herself for violence, for rage, for any true mark of a Brother of the Buried Flesh. She waits a long time.

So long, in fact, that she peeks through one eye to check if he's still standing there.

"Nice splinting," he says with a commending nod as he looks over the network of plywood and gauze wrapped around the large wings. To the girl, he says, "If they come down here, we'll have to…"

Bella feels the soft tickle of feathers on the back of her arm. "She knows."

.

.

Running down the docks in search of her father, Bella weaves in between vendors and crewmen offering a few embarrassed apologies when she inevitably stumbles into a stall and upends a bucket of clams. Gulls circle and squawk overhead the winding down market. Usually, she can find Charlie out here haggling for specialty catches.

It was a busy morning on this side of the island. She counts the ships as she dashes.

True to routine, she spots her father leaning against the railing of Waylon's boat talking to some fishermen. He spots her and lifts a hand in a wave. "Bells! You're just in time to do some work. Grab a bucket."

Bella groans but she only means it halfway. She's been skipping out on some of her chores lately, but she thinks the coins she slips onto the tip plate at the tavern when her dad's not looking more than make up for it. After all, she's making her own money these days.

She bends and picks up the handle of a bucket with clawed and writhing things poking out of the dark water. Maybe if she accidentally tripped she could return the unlucky little crabs to their rightful homes, but she's tried that trick before. Charlie didn't like it much.

As she walks back up the dock, her eyes trace over the names of the boats bobbing in their little harbor. There's Waylon's beloved Tresserhorn, the mighty SS Alburn, Klytaimestra XIII, the Rosalie-

Bella stops and stares at the massive merchant vessel that's been back and forth from the mainland all her life. A wide smile spreads across her young face.

.

"Do you like it?"

She nods once, definitively and without much thought, and Bella goes back to carefully working a comb through the snarls in her long blond hair.

"I could call you Rose," she whispers.

Rosalie looks over, eyes bright and avid.

"Are you an angel?" Bella blurts, feeling her face flush immediately after.

"Angel," Rosalie repeats, drawing out the word. She doesn't know that one.

"From heaven?" Bella tries.

A small smile crosses her face. She lifts her chin, the blued line of her jaw. "No," she says. "I'm not."

She points back to the page of the storybook Bella left off reading, and Bella clears her throat, once again finding a rhythm with the comb through Rose's hair. It's a children's book from the library. One of the ones Charlie would read to her when she was younger.

In the story, some woodland fairies played a trick on the cold-hearted prince. They were expecting revenge, but instead, he invited them into his castle for a grand feast. Overjoyed, they dressed up in their finest clothes and even left behind their wands and magical powders.

"Foolish," Rose mutters, flicking her eyes away from the colorless illustrations. "They want to die, yes?"

"Seems like it." Bella goes to turn the page to reveal the fairies' doom when Rose catches her hand midair to stop her. Confused, she brushes the pale air aside to see her face. "Everything okay?"

"Change it," Rose demands. Well, as much as one can demand with a whisper.

"Change…the story? But it's already written."

Rose taps insistently on the page. Spending so much time with her in this cold cavern, Bella has learned quite a bit about the personality that burns beneath the fear and contempt the blackcloaks bring out in her. When they are alone, Rose is impatient and surly and even a little bit bossy at times. She has no control over her life, but god help her, she will control Bella when she comes down to see her. Bella doesn't really mind much. It would be a little funny if it weren't so heartbreaking.

Bella absently runs her fingers through the smooth, untangled half of her hair, giving the request some thought. After a moment, she closes the book and starts over from the beginning.

Chapter Text

Spring 1887

The wind stings Marcus' face as he turns toward the water. The sky is unnervingly clear this evening. A rarity on this mist-veiled rock. Above, the stars glitter ominously as if poised to come crashing down should the Devil turn her back on them.

Behind him, Royce whispers to the pitiful creature through the bars of the rounded cage. Marcus disapproves of the fascination, but he understands it all the same. He was there, after all. When they found it.

The creature hisses, wings struggling fruitlessly against the binds. It backs away when Royce reaches in through the bars.

"Little bird." The priest tuts with a smile and a shake of his head. Suddenly, he lunges forward and yanks it by the jaw lock into the bars, metal banging with the force of a blacksmith's hammer. Quicksilver eyes cross, knocked asunder.

Marcus frowns at the show of violence as Royce turns the key, allowing the lock to fall away from its mouth. Freed, it wastes not a second before shrieking. It always does. No matter how many times it fails to penetrate the wax plugging their ears.

The priest laughs and pulls the cage to the cliff's edge. The highest point of Eldensmouth. Through the mist and fog, Marcus can just make out the dark shape of a passing ship.

"Now," the priest says, striking the cage with the bar of his arm. "Bring them to me."

…

…

3.

A grand bird lets out a shrill screech and spreads its wings in flight, casting a quick shadow over the verdant forest of Eldensmouth.

Below, a young girl runs with all her strength from the pack of young ones chasing her through the overgrown brush. She is uncoordinated and unsure on her feet. Her bare arms collect thin red gashes from thorns and thistle as she leans into the edge of panic.

They catch her easily. She was never going to get away.

By the gangly, scraped-up arms they drag her to a tree so blackened by lightning strikes it almost looks evil. Laughter rises up into the sky as they bob and loop around her, tying her to the charred truck with a bit of leftover twine from the sailmaker's shop.

You lose.

She's scrawny and bookish, quick to run but easy to catch. She used to play with them, but now she just disappears. They miss her, they miss her so, but they will never learn the words for the feelings that push them to tie the knots. It's confusing anyway. Much easier to chase her! To hurt her for leaving.

She struggles, kicking her feet at them and hissing like a little cat! How silly she is! She never used to do that. She never used to run around with bronze feathers poking out of her pockets. She never used to ignore them.

Brown hair tangled across her face, the girl looks up and…smiles?

She's strange now. They've all noticed.

Suddenly, a voice.

Behind them. The children freeze, snickers caught in their throats. They turn slowly toward the sound and cower when their eyes snap to the black cloak, the shadowy face, the dagger clutched in the fist resting against a nearby tree trunk.

"Shouldn't you all be getting home now?" he asks, and the lot of them nod so fast their necks ache with it. "Go on, then."

The children waste no time putting some distance between themselves and the dark hand that reaches for them in their dream worlds. It seems that none of them stop to remember the poor friend they tied so tightly to the charred old tree.

Once the gaggle of brats disappears off in the direction of the town, Jasper shrugs off the hood of his cape and makes quick work of the twine with the dagger.

"Did you get it?" he asks once she's free.

She rolls her eyes at him and pulls a bent envelope from her pocket. In the same motion, she pulls the dagger from his hand and slides it back into her boot where it has belonged since the day he gave it to her. A sure promise of the strange trust that's grown between them.

A sure thing, yet he's aware of her hesitance around him even now. After all, it is the Buried Church that ultimately decides what he will and won't do. She's right to remember that.

Jasper shakes the thought away and ruffles her messy hair a bit before tearing open the seal on the letter. "Thanks, kid."

"Don't mention it." She stumbles along beside him as they make their way back to the trail. "Wouldn't want to get in the way of your love letters."

He laughs and gives the back of her head a light smack.

She glares at him, but it's pretty weak. "Have you been doing what I asked?"

"Yup."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah, and she hates me for it. Made it about ten pages so far. I even went to the library like you said. Man! I never thought there was so many of them books! I got the one you said, though. The Sea Cook." He'd be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying the kid's orders to read to the winged girl. She'd told him a few months ago that it would help her learn their tricky and forgotten language. "You know, it says right on the cover: A Story for Boys."

"Books are for everyone, Jas."

.

The cavern is cool and unlit when she enters. And also empty.

Bella bends to brighten her lantern, catching a faint rustle somewhere far above her head. She crosses her arms. "I know you're there."

Quiet laughter drifts on the still air, and in a sudden avalanche of darkness, Rose lands before her in a crouched position. Her wings fold behind her as she stands up straight, now almost a head taller than Bella.

Nearly a year has passed since the bones healed. She's grown stronger, bolder, even. She can't quite fly yet, but she sure can leap.

"Good morning to you too," she says as Rose bows her head and moves aside her hair for Bella to turn the key. Bella catches the cold lock with her free hand, nearly toppling over with the weight of it. It's baffling to her how Rose manages to move at all with it anchoring her down.

As she's setting it aside, Rose grabs her sleeve and pulls it up to her face, inspecting the mud. She brushes it off and huffs out a breath when she notices the sorry state of the rest of Bella's clothes and the red marks from the twine on her upper arms. "What happened?"

Bella shrugs out of her grasp and catches her hands, swinging them lightheartedly. "Nothing, Rose."

Her wings extend with a whisper, projecting Rose throughout the entire chamber. In a blink and a strong gust of wind, Bella feels herself wrapped in soft feathers. The light from the lamp is completely blocked out, leaving just the two of them in a little room of their own.

"They bother you," Rose whispers, and Bella wishes more than most things that she could just hear her real voice without the price.

"It's not a big deal. I couldn't let them follow me here. They had to catch me."

Maybe it was cruel of Bella to mention her little life's annoyances to a girl who would surely swoop in and fix everything if she could. If she were free. Sometimes when her mind wanders, it rounds on a blurry image of Rose knocking Mike Newton aside with a thoughtless flick of her wing. It's a silly fantasy she clings to when Rose greets her with more bruises than she had the day before.

In another kind of life maybe they could have been drawings in a library book. Bella and the Roaming Angel.

But Bella isn't the one who needs saving. Not even close.

Rose still hasn't lowered her wings. They're standing so close, in the same air, even. The directness of her silver gaze inspires a troubled heat in Bella's cheeks. Bella lifts her chin, baring her throat to the stinging mercury instead.

"What were you doing up there?" she asks, nodding toward the dripping stalactites and the oval of light that served as her first entrance to Rose's chamber.

"The sun," Rose answers. Her wings fall away slowly. I miss the sun.

.

.

Bella works through her arithmetic problem set on the bench outside Mr. Newton's store while her father catches up with the shopkeeper and the butcher from across the way. Her pencil scratches the answers into the page without much thought. It's just busywork, after all. Her tutor, Miss Platt, likes to good-naturedly bop her on the head with rolled-up papers and proclaim that she should be away on the mainland halfway through a college degree already.

She's never been to the mainland, but it sounds like a confused dream. Larger than life with its boastful skyscrapers and cross-country trains. How can she begin to imagine such things, a girl born and raised in sleepy Eldensmouth and all?

Through the screen door, she catches some of her father's conversation. Normally she wouldn't care to listen. The grown men around here seem only to speak of fishing and the Brotherhood's latest transgressions. But something different catches her ear and draws her attention away from her homework.

"-the ninth since October."

"That can't be right."

"I believe it. You've seen the docks. Empty more and more lately. It's like… people are scared."

Bella leans over the edge of the bench to see inside, but her book slides from her lap and makes a racket on the porch, halting the conversation she was trying to hear. Charlie chuckles and slides a few coins across the counter to pay. "I better get goin' gentlemen. Kid's getting restless."

Embarrassed, Bella quickly picks up her things and follows her father down the street. "What was that about?" she asks, jogging a little to match his long stride.

"A few boats have gone missing, is all. It happens from time to time. Rough water, inexperienced crew, bad luck… That sort."

Bella considers that, a low-buzz of worry taking hold in her mind. "You're not going out on the water with Waylon, are you?"

Charlie grins. "Nah. Why? Worried about your old man?"

.

Later that night, she lies awake in the low-turned light from her lamp and watches the wobbling shadows on the ceiling above her bed, mind turning too rapidly for sleep to come.

She has waved from the dock countless times to sailors as they disappeared into the fog shrouding Eldensmouth. It never occurred to her that it's possible to get lost in it. And to never find a way out.

.

.

A rare patch of pale sunlight shines on the wet stone. Caught in the beam, Rose splashes some water on her face from a barrel. Bella watches the stream of droplets bead from her blue jaw.

Above, the cage stirs, suspended by its chain, the weak groan of old metal lining their quiet. Bella's gaze drifts upward. It sets her mind down a curved path.

She sits up on Rose's makeshift bed. "Where do they take you?"

Rose stills with her arms half-submerged in the water. Her face bends, dismayed when she can't find the words. She's so intelligent, Bella sees it in the way her eyes track over the words in their books when Bella reads to her. But the steady slowness of her verbal progress frustrates her.

Bella tries again. Serious for all her young years. "Do they hurt you?"

"Maybe," she says, drawing her arms from the water and giving them a shake. A few cool drops land on the page of Bella's open book. "If I do not sing."

"Sing?"

Rose nods, a hand drifting to the dark blotting over her neck, the other clutching at the skirt of her dirty white tablecloth of a dress. "Sing them here."

"Who?"

Rose turns away. She says no more until they part ways for the afternoon.

.

.

The torches are lit at the Buried Church when Bella pushes out of the library late one summer evening. Through the darkly consecrated walls escapes the low hum of joined voices, a monotonous rite. She shouldn't be out this late, she must have lost track of time reading.

Collection Day hollowed out the town earlier this afternoon when the blackcloaks marched the streets and knocked on every door demanding what's due. Bella has asked her father about it before and even Old Waylon a few times, but nobody seems to have a better explanation for her than I'll tell you when you're older. They don't learn about it in school, just through the quiet tension in the days leading up to each season's end.

The stained glass glows red as she hurries down the street. The Buried Church, she thinks about it all the time. Why do they make a prisoner out of a young girl? What do they believe in? It's not the kind of place with a guided tour. Bella keeps her eyes forward, no matter how much the ominous humming pulls at her and grows in volume as she retreats.

There's a scuffle at the Angel. Like always. Strong drinks and rough words. It doesn't take much to get a green sailor mean. At least that's what Charlie says. Bella skirts around the side of the tavern as the commotion brews inside. She hears her father raise his voice to break it up.

The humming grows in her ears as she fumbles with the back door. Footsteps collect behind her.

Turn around.

She drops her book and grasps at the doorknob with both hands. Her heart goes cold for the elongated seconds it takes to get the damn thing open. Bella throws herself inside and drives her shoulder into the sturdy wooden door to close it.

Lantern light passes through the crack in the bottom. She holds her breath.

It vanishes a moment later.

…

…

Marcus' dwindling mettle comes out in a foggy sigh as he waits on the rain-damp cliff, one hand resting on the cart, the other on the hilt of his sheathed dagger.

The song, they say the wax stops it, but sometimes he swears, just for a moment, that the creature's will slips around the seal and in between his thoughts. Open the door. Cut the rope. Run.

Perhaps it is unwise to blame his weakness of faith on the winged demon. Royce is callous and violent in his methods, but he never once steered them from Hell's clear call. Not until they discovered this creature, that is.

Neck straining, tears leak from the corners of the creature's eyes. It must be painful, carrying that power, ensnaring minds and cutting them down to nothing but ribbons of hypnotized flesh. The voice vibrates through the cage's structure. He can only imagine what's happening on the water beneath that thick layer of fog.

He doesn't have to imagine for long anyway.

Helplessly suspended on a monstrous wave, the Aurelia smashes into the jagged rocks off Levin's Point, pulled by the moon, the mercury, the Siren. From far above, Marcus watches the blackcloaks swarm, boarding the dashed vessel by any means.

He pictures the crew kneeled in pools of their own blood; screaming through their teeth; hands scrabbling to cover their ears to block out the auditory ice pick, the senseless lobotomy. How is it possible for all that misery to come from one little beast?

He glances over, once again flooded with weakness. The creature. It looks just like the kids who play in the street and sit through lectures in the library. Its neck is ringed with bruises from the lock Royce had specially welded to keep its mouth shut while underground.

They've used it for riches, not devotion.

Sure, it helps create chaos and sacrifice to the Divine One, but is it not treasure that gleams in Royce's eyes as he slaughters the whimpering captains and crews on these wrecked ships? Does he devote their deaths to the one below? Or are they simply the only thing standing between him and wealth beyond measure?

Open the door. Cut the rope. Run.

Marcus suspects the Devil is not as forgiving as her heavenly counterpart.

Open the door.

He lifts his hand. How he longs for the days of simple, honorific sacrifice. No ulterior motive, just for the flare of the dark heart below.

This could all end right here.

If only he weren't such a coward.

Chapter Text

Summer 1888

Esme Platt teaches her students the English word for sunlight. She writes it out on the chalkboard in broad Roman letters and instructs them to copy it down.

The children of Eldensmouth balk and lean back in their seats as if the new string of letters might slash out at them.

Never before in her travels has she come across a lot of children so unwilling to devour knowledge. Often, she wonders just how deeply removed this island is from the rest of the world as it charges forward.

It was her sense of adventure ultimately that brought her to this mysterious rock. Upon arrival, she imagined the children here would be young explorers and scientists in the making, bright-eyed and coltish and eager to experience the world.

Esme glances around their small corner of the library, not quite looking but perhaps hoping for a spark of interest. But it seems the downpour outside has everyone either agitated or half-asleep.

The pair of boys from the general store squirm in their seats, ready to start thumping each other on the head the moment she turns her back. Beside them, Charlie Swan's daughter dutifully copies the word down in her precise handwriting. Esme knows the girl daydreams through most of these lessons, close to fluent already from the small collection of books left untranslated by the Brotherhood.

As bright as she is, she shows the same reluctance to excel as the other children. It seems almost ingrained into their young heads that the ocean drops off behind all that mist and fog. The mainland, just a dream. Eldensmouth is all. One doesn't have to look far to see the reason why.

In fact, one only has to look a few shelves over at the decorated priest as he reaches for a thick volume on nautical knots. Royce King turns his head in her direction and smiles, a flatness in his eyes that disagrees with her.

"Never mind, then," Esme says quietly. With a sweep of her hand, she erases the sun.

While their teacher's attention is displaced, Mike Newton smacks his younger brother on the side of his face.

The priest shakes his head, amused. He flips through the pages of the heavy book in his hands without so much as glancing at the detailed diagrams. Instead, his eyes catch a glint of movement. A familiar silver-brown flick.

Tucked behind the ear of some filthy, sniveling child, is a long umber feather. She brushes her fingers against the dark vane as she scratches down a few sentences in her notebook. Upon a closer look, he recognizes her as the teenage daughter of the tavern keeper.

The priest smiles to himself as he reshelves the book and walks away.

…

…

4.

"I'm fourteen, not four. I know what love is."

Jasper laughs, a loud bark of a noise. It echoes back to them as they descend into the caves. "Big talk for a kid with sticks in her hair."

He reaches for the letter in her hands, but she jerks her arm away at the last second. "I have sticks in my hair because you won't let me take the path anymore. I have to find my own way." She gives her head a stiff shake, and sure enough, half the forest dislodges itself from her long brown hair. Satisfied, she unfolds the letter and immediately rolls her eyes at the lipstick marks cluttered over the page like butterfly wings. "Really?"

"Alice is very passionate." He's got a faraway look in his eyes, but Bella's pretty sure she knows where his mind's at.

"I'll bet," she mutters. She holds the paper closer to the lantern hanging from her arm. "My very dear Jasper, I am tired of feigning impatience. Quite frankly I am desperate. I need your-"

He yanks the paper out of her hands. "Give me that!"

"Then maybe you shouldn't have letters posted to my house. And with my name on the envelope, no less."

"I can't risk-"

"I know, I know. Your precious Brotherhood that lives on top of you."

Quieter now, Jasper folds up the letter and tucks it away. The two of them might as well call each other friends, strange as it is. It's been two years since she plummeted into one of the Brotherhood's darkest secrets. It's enough time to know when she's gone a bit too far.

Jasper moved to the island almost three years ago with his father to help rebuild part of the library. Two months before it was completed, Mr. Whitlock got sick. He's not fit to work, let alone make the journey back home to the mainland. Jasper wears a black cloak to pay for his father's treatments. Beyond the pay, he steps no further into the dark church at the head of the town.

"Sorry." Bella meets his gaze. "I know you don't have a choice."

"Nobody really does."

.

.

A steady stream of dirty stormwater drains down into the cavern from the exposed hole overhead. Mud and leaves splat against the floor as water begins to collect and flood in the deepest corner of the small chamber.

Bella helps Rose move her bed and precious few belongings up onto a pair of wooden crates to keep them dry. While Rose's movements are jerky with irritation, there's something inextinguishable about her smile today.

Before Bella can ask, Rose taps on one of the crates which Bella interprets as sit down after a moment of thought and receives a somewhat condescending pat on the head when she complies. So maybe she's a little slow on the non-verbal communication, but at least she's trying.

Rose takes a few good-paced steps backward and points at Bella with both hands. This one's easy.

"I'm ready," Bella says, folding her hands in her lap.

Rose grins, a wicked thing that scatters lightning all throughout Bella's body. Bella dips her chin, flushed and confused. There isn't time to pick it apart, though, because Rose bends her knees, dark wings unfurling smoothly behind her. They rise, trembling slightly before thrashing downward and repeating the motion as Rose's feet rise off the ground.

From high above, she shoots a glance at Bella as if to make sure she's still watching. How could she possibly look away? Emboldened, Rose veers off to the left and dives across the cavern almost too quickly to register.

Bella laughs, shocked to her core.

She's doing it! She's flying!

The space is cramped and her wings are simply too large but somehow, she manages a few tight circles around the room, graceful as music. Bella pictures her soaring over the wild summer waves, puncturing straight through the foggy cloud wall and out into blue skies and shimmering heat. Just Rose and the sunset, forever.

It's perfect.

By the time she lands, she's out of breath but glowing with pride. Clearly, she's been practicing. And keeping it all a secret too.

"You're- I'm-" Bella stammers, lost.

Rose squeezes her eyes shut, laughing in her own way. She holds her hands out.

Bella hops off the crate and slips across the muddy floor to catch her fingers before they drift. "Rose! You're amazing!"

Moonbeams have nothing on her smile.

.

.

The days grow warmer as the summer reaches its height. Some days Bella can even leave the tavern without a sturdy jacket. Fine weather blows through the damp little village, filling the streets with activity, the docks with heightened traffic, and the overgrown park with students lucky enough to have outdoor lessons.

Bella listens closely as Miss Platt classifies native flora. Beside her, Denny Newton flops onto his back and pretends to die suddenly. He jabs her leg with his elbow to get her to pay attention to him. She tears up a handful of long grass and drops it on his unsuspecting face, throwing him a bone. She hasn't had much time to terrorize the town with the pack of her peers lately between seeing Rose and helping Charlie.

The Newton brothers still try to follow her sometimes, but she knows the dark side of the island better than almost anyone by now. There are a million ways to disappear from sight between here and the mouth of the caves.

He blows a few green blades straight up in the air and punches her shoulder good-naturedly. They'll always be friends.

.

After the lesson lets out, Miss Platt catches her as she's collecting her things from the spongy grass. She holds out a pale green hardcover with a ribbon bookmark poking out from the pages.

"What's this?" Bella asks, shifting her own battered reader into the crook of her arm.

"I've noticed you working your way through- well, the entire library it seems." Miss Platt smiles brightly, looking quite like a storybook character herself. She points to the book as Bella opens the cover. "I brought it with me from home. It was one of my favorites when I was about your age. I thought you might like it."

"What's it about?"

"A young girl who gets to see the world."

How daunting to venture across a reckless ocean that wouldn't spare a calm moment to save a keening ship. Still, at the same time, there's something so alluring about it all. Beyond the fog. The mainland. Big cities, museums, far-off lands, glaciers, volcanoes. It's all out there somewhere. It must be.

Moved, she hugs her teacher for a brief second before taking off toward the street, shouting a thank you over her shoulder as she goes.

.

.

Rose nudges her white game piece across the paper board and sits back with her arms crossed and an unmistakable air of arrogance about her. All Bella can do is stare at her ravaged battalion. As it turns out, Rose is disturbingly good at chess for someone who barely learned the rules two weeks ago. Any strategies Charlie taught her have since liquefied, and every (foolish) time she thinks she has the upper hand, Rose simply yanks the floor out from beneath her in a few short turns.

"I don't think I can beat you anymore," she mutters as she surveys her options.

"You should practice."

"Oh, thanks." Bella reaches for a random piece only for Rose to shake her head. She tries another only to get the same hint. Finally, she sits back on her hands. "Well then what do you propose I do?"

Rose gives the board a cursory glance and then leans across the battlefield with her hand cupped around her mouth conspiratorially. "Surrender."

"Or you could give me a chance."

"No."

"No?" The end of her braid sweeps the back of her hands as she tilts her head. "Why not?"

The playfulness falls from the ghostly shine of her eyes landing among the chipped wooden pieces arranged on the hand-shaded board. "Because no one ever gives you a chance."

"Rose?" Alarmed, Bella reaches her hand out. "What's wr-"

"It was too far." Barely a thread of a whisper, but Bella hears it drag along the cavern walls. The lamplight betrays the tears as they spring to her eyes, burning as if Bella could reach over and draw the silver iris out into a thin wire.

She is thinking of home.

The old chess pieces scatter as Bella closes the short space between them. Perhaps too earnest an effort for the way she knocks into Rose like a rogue wave. The words she has were arranged and ordered centuries ago on this watery rock. They are not fit for a girl trapped within.

Her fingers clutch at Bella's shoulder blades, voice barely pinned to a whisper. "I couldn't make it back. I didn't know."

Bella only holds her tighter because no matter how many times Rose artfully wins at chess or masters a new book or glides into a soft landing; at the end of the morning when that metal door opens, it is clear who is leaving and who is staying put.

.

.

"You should eat something, Bells," Charlie says as he passes by her little desk in the backroom of the Angel.

She's been slumped over, ignoring her homework and the two mugs of white tea and the bowl of soup her father has dropped off throughout the evening. Her school assignment is pinned beneath her crossed forearms, unfinished and crumpled.

"I'm not hungry," she mutters.

He stops rifling around the shelves and looks her way, concern creasing his brows. "You not feeling good?" he asks.

"I'm fine." She swats away his hand when he tries to check her forehead for a fever. Her throat feels tight, it has since this morning. It's never easy leaving Rose down there. Some days are just better than others.

He frowns and collects her untouched tea mugs. "Alright, then."

"I'm sorry," she calls after him, ashamed. It's not his fault she can't explain herself. Her eyes drift uncomfortably to the smooth cover of the book Miss Platt lent her yesterday. A girl who gets to see the world. "Dad?"

Charlie pulls the rag from his shoulder and tosses it behind the bar, checking on a few customers as they sulk over their drinks. He comes back to her a few minutes later with some pudding in a small bowl. She takes it if only to ease his mildly apparent worry.

"How come you never left the island?" she asks.

He's mostly unsurprised by the inquiry. "My whole life's here. Always has been."

"Did you ever want to leave?"

"'Course I did." He crosses his arms and leans against the narrow door frame "My dad used to say there's nothing out there but a world of hurt. As a kid, I couldn't believe that. So I found a job on a packet boat with Waylon first chance I got. I wanted him to be wrong."

"And?"

"Well, it wasn't all daisies, I'll tell you that much. But then, what place is? I don't want to tell you what to think. That's what they do," he says, nodding toward the head of town. "I guess…you take the good and the bad with every place you land. Guess I figured old Eldensmouth had a system I already knew by heart. No need to start over someplace else. So I stayed."

Bella traces the crumpled edge of her paper with the tip of her finger. "The Buried Church…what do they worship?"

Charlie scratches the back of his head. Adults around here get so squirrely at the mere mention of the blackcloaks. "Uh…"

"Please," she says quietly. "Please tell me the truth."

He lets out a gruff sigh and nods once. "Well, ask one and they'll tell you they worship the Devil. But between you and me, I think they worship themselves."

.

.

In the night, Bella wakes with a sharp gasp and queasy pitch of her stomach. Her dreams were jagged things- a palm outstretched, bleeding mercury through the fingers; teeth too sharp and long; a shadow looming somewhere just beyond sight.

Dread-leaden, she forgets her basket and takes off down the hidden path to the caves through the woods. The moisture in the air hangs around her like a sticky fog as she tears through the overgrown brush in pure darkness.

At the end of the tunnel, Jasper is sitting on an extra water barrel by the door staring down at his hands instead of napping like she usually finds him. His blond head snaps up when he hears her clamoring down the stone steps, and in an instant, he's on his feet with his hands out in front of him, a pained look on his face.

"Hold on, Bella. I don't think-"

She tries to push past him, but he's a lot bigger than she is. "Let me in there! I- I saw-"

Jasper puts a hand on her shoulder and walks her back a few steps. "It's not a good time right now. You should go home. I'll- I'll come get you tomorrow."

"I'm not-"

A muffled cry on the other side of the door tints Bella's whole world a dark red. Her heart thunders in her chest. The threads of her nerves ignite, and without a thought from her head, she reaches down and pulls the dark knife from her boot.

"Bella?" Jasper draws his arm back and holds both hands at his sides.

Stunned by her own gall, her entire arm begins to tremble as she holds the knife in front of herself. She feels the tears behind her eyes and the cold fear underneath this shallow attempt of bravery. Could she do it? Could she hurt him? "Get out of the way."

"Put that thing away."

He's not afraid of her. Why would he be? She's just a kid about to cry. She could never hurt a soul.

"Open the door. Please, Jasper." The words are strangled. They barely escape the painful constriction of her throat.

He sucks in a breath and nods once on the exhale, firm. "I'm warning you. She might not see you as…you."

She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes and sniffs. "What does that mean?"

He jerks his head to the side and points to a tangle of old scars down his neck. "When it hurts…everybody's the monster."

.

The cage.

Bella's never seen it up close before; it's huge and gleaming in the lantern light. The stone beneath the enormous base is cracked as if they'd dropped it all the way from the ceiling when they were lowering her back down. The door is flung open, one of the hinges busted from the drop.

It's empty.

There's no sound but the uneven rasp of breathing and stirring water coming from the darkest corner.

Bella turns toward the shadow. "Rose?"

A single ring of silver arcs the light back at her, and Bella gasps, blood like ice. She steps forward with a hand outstretched.

Rose screams into the lock.

Bella's vision blurs as the sound flies through her brain like tiny razor blades. She falls to her knees on the hard stone floor. Senses robbed, the inside of her head is caught in a metallic chorus of agony.

"It's me!" she cries above the chaos. Or maybe she's just screaming her head off. "Rose! It's me. It's Bella."

She's a weapon, Bella realizes amidst the riptide of suffering.

She's scared. That much, Bella has always known.

Bella grits her teeth and forces her eyes open against the stab of her instincts and the screeching of the girl smashed into the corner of the room. She drags herself to her hands and knees, blinking forcefully through the haze, persisting to the end.

"It's okay," Bella says, her own voice strange in her ringing ears. Her mind swims, she can't think straight. Feathers curl around her peripheral. She pushes against the strange lull of the pain, the sheer intensity of it that circles back into numbness. Wouldn't it be nice? To just fall in?

Rose is looking right at her, but she's not seeing a thing. The right side of her face is swallowed in a mottled purple bruise. There's a split in her brow oozing dark blood.

Bella lifts her hand, shaking with the effort. From her fist dangles the small key. Maybe she'll turn the key in the lock and Rose will show her what she can really do. It's what should happen.

But it doesn't.

She pulls the lock free and casts it aside, catching Rose's face in the palms of her hands. Terrified, her silver eyes dart around until they catch Bella's. Recognition loosens the desperate coil in her hunched stance until she slumps forward into her only friend in the world.

"I will get you out of here," Bella says as the noise leaves her head. Tears well from her eyes as Rose clings to her. "I swear it."

.

.

Bella stands before the Buried Church, eyes fixed on the fiery torches against the black night. Inside, low voices collect and chant, firelight blazing behind the blood-red glass. The stone in her hands feels awkward, top-heavy and jagged.

Sunlight, she'd whispered days ago, tripping over the unfamiliar English, the fading chalk dust, repeating it just for something to hold onto. By then, Rose had wiped away her tears and begun resetting their chess game from memory. A blurry handful of moves later, she took Bella's splintered king. The easiest thing she'd done all week.

I told you to surrender.

I think sometimes you have to fight until the end.

And draw out the suffering?

The street is quiet and dark, gutters flooding downhill toward the docks. Proof of life on Eldensmouth almost disappears when the sun does. But never the church. The building itself seems alive. Some earthen brick heart jump-started by one too many lightning strikes.

Raindrops pelt the shoulders of her nightshirt. In her eyes, fractals of deepest night harden. She winds her arm back and hurls the rock with all her might straight into the unblinking eye.

As she stalks away, she imagines brittle red fangs cutting into the crisscrossing light of the sanctuary, a veritable typhoon of blood over their heads to match their hands.

Chapter Text

Autumn 1890

The stranger clings to the shadows of the lively town square. It appears a harvest festival of the pagan variety is in full swing. Children join hands and race around the peculiar indigo flames of a driftwood pyre chanting in an otherwise dead language. The pounding rain does nothing to dampen their spirits or slow the preparation of this evening's feast.

Bloody Eldensmouth. The stranger shakes his head but smiles anyway. Such a strange place. Technologically, about twenty years behind the mainland just a day's journey away but self-sufficient on this rain-soaked rock.

How do they endure?

A fair question, though not the one he was sent to find out.

The answer to both, however, is found not far from here.

Figures in black cloaks haunt the perimeter. Keeping watch or perhaps walling them in. It seems Caius' suspicions were founded.

The stranger taps his foot to the lively music melodically crashing on the other side of the street. He wonders if these celebrating Eldensmouthers ever venture to the cliffs beyond the lighthouse. If they deviate from their daily chores to follow that thinned path to the top of Levin's Point and look out over the cold and unforgiving water. Do they manage it?

Do they look down?

Do they lower their eyes to the dull graveyard of smashed hulls and the splintered remnants of lost ships? Do they venture down into the caves and find them filled with filched cargo and stolen, bloody treasure? Do they see?

The stranger lifts his gaze in time to catch a young woman with a basket of fruit ducking her head as she hurries by two black-cloaked men. The red stained glass windows of the church glint in the weak sunset.

Of course, the Eldensmouthers do not see.

They are forcibly blinded by the Buried Flesh.

Having seen enough of tonight's festivities, the stranger lowers the wide brim of his hat and slips between two buildings. A faint rustle behind him puts a little speed in his step. He looks over his shoulder and reaches across his chest for the pistol in his shoulder holster.

Perhaps if he had more experience with darkness, the stranger would know that evil lurks in every shadow.

Even one's own.

To his left, a large door yawns open. An arm shoots out and seizes his shoulder. His back collides roughly with a wall, the forceful expulsion of a last breath. Gathered cloaks fill his vision, broken up by the glint of black steel.

The stranger closes his eyes, his paper-thin fate sealed. It is not fear that floods him as the blade slips between his ribs but relief.

Relief for his partner who is safe on the water's horizon with evidence in hand and predicted vengeance in his heart.

.

Across the island, thirty feet beneath the rock, Rosalie startles awake. Lifeblown red mist disintegrates into the dying lamplight.

Her heart grows harder.

…

…

5.

Bella wipes her forearm across her brow and shifts her weight to her other knee as she peers through her binoculars. September seems reluctant to let go of these last few muggy afternoons speckled with lukewarm rainfall. But the uncomfortable heat and the white glare of sunlight through the scratched lenses do almost nothing to pull her gaze from the post at the mouth of the tunnels.

The subject of her scrutiny checks the time restlessly on his pocket watch, glass face catching the sun and throwing it down her twin telescopes. She blinks and leans further into the rock wall that's served as her cover for the past few weeks.

Like all the guards he is young and low-ranking within the Brotherhood. Not important enough to know the truth of what lies at the heart of the cave's darkness. And perhaps less inclined to follow his duties because of it.

The blackcloak glances up toward the gold-touched clouds then scans around himself briefly before darting up the trail that will take him back up the jagged cliffs and eventually dump him out just outside the village.

All this a whole twenty minutes before his relief is scheduled to show up.

Bella watches him go, scratching a checkmark next to the date in her field notebook, and after a few minutes, she unfolds herself from her hiding place and heads for the path home. She flips through the pages of her journal as she walks, sheets and sheets of Xs and checkmarks fan out before her. Months of careful work.

But she's done it. Spotted the pattern in the blood spatter.

It's easy to make a promise, to say the words and mean them, to swear them. But after that day of dark bruises and blood, Bella began to see quite clearly just how out of her depth she was. Just the tavernkeeper's clumsy kid stuck on a rock and helpless to the drag of the days beating down around her like murky rainfall.

It hadn't been the first time they hurt Rosalie.

And it certainly wasn't the last.

Quickly she learned to recognize those promises for what they were: mere lines drawn in the sand. How paltry a barrier to the thrashing of the tide. The horrified vows of rescue started to fade like the echo of a distant shout. Not even the chamber could keep the resonance.

Now, two years later, she isn't going to say it again until it's true. Until she can spit in the face of doubt.

She tucks her notebook beneath her arm and takes off down the path towards home.

.

.

The Roaming Angel drags in the same handful of men night after night. Mr. Newton, harried from those troublesome boys of his; Old Waylon who fancies himself a storyteller but maybe shouldn't; the doctor, with blood on his collar to prove his mettle. Charlie pours drinks that muddy the daytime lines of their faces.

These days, Bella stokes and stirs her way through her father's simple menu items in exchange for a small allowance to line the bottom of her cedar chest. This, in addition to what Miss Platt presses into her reluctant hand after a long afternoon of wrangling the five-year-olds of Eldensmouth together.

Little by little, she glimpses a break in the fog.

She can just imagine the great yawn of the world on the other side. It makes her palms sweat- what she's doing. Tailing the blackcloaks, picking out coincidences that wear themselves into patterns.

Knowing that James abandons his post outside the caves approximately twenty minutes too early on the second and third Wednesday of every month (but never on the first or the fourth) because that's when his girlfriend- the baker's daughter, Victoria- has nothing better to do for an hour than watch bread rise. For the sake of being thorough and to Bella's eternal horror, the second and third Wednesdays almost always result in fogged kitchen windows and tough, inedible loaves.

Or knowing that the Delphir moors twice a month, and often on Thursday mornings to deliver great cases of supplies to Mr. Newton's store. Two men do the bulk of the lifting despite the size of the vessel, minutes pass without a soul watching that deck.

Or that the Buried Church patrols the town up to eight days in advance of Collection Day to make sure no slip of the mind can be cited when that golden plate comes around. The standard formation of blackcloaks is nine-strong and moves on a predetermined path down the main streets.

At least once a month, they stalk the town at sunset and chase the people inside their homes and behind their locks only to turn tail for Levin's Point, the rickety crank of the old brown chain. It's the lighthouse. Below which Rose paces until goaded into the cage and yanked from her chamber into the hollow column of the beacon, lifted onto a cart and heaved up the cliffs at a pace so slow it's grave to watch from the bushes.

Look for me.

She ladles out a few bowls of clam chowder and delivers them to the patrons sparsely dotting the tables, looking like wrung-out cloths. Charlie mumbles a quick thank you as she passes by him on her way to the small kitchen in the back.

She has a plan of course. And some money. It's beginning to solidify before her eyes. It's almost all she thinks about.

But sometimes (very, very often) her timetables and smart notes and connections spill out her ears and land in logical puddles on the floor squealing escape and rescue through tiny, fizzing bubbles depending on her confidence level that day.

Two things cause this peculiar halt to her scheming.

The first is the overwhelming full-body dread she feels when she passes herself in the mirror and remembers that not only is she just a scrawny kid, but she looks a bit like her father- her father who doesn't know she's hoarding money and writing down the names of docked ships like a religion. Charlie, who ultimately cannot come with her when she- when they-

She still can scarcely put voice to her plans. How shaky she feels right this moment, dishing out a few more bowls of soup for Mike and Denny who just trudged in from the tepid rain. The tin bowls shiver against the wooden tray in her hands. Charlie raises an eyebrow, a wordless check to her wavering well-being. She gives him a curt nod and jitters over to her classmates who are playfully banging their fists on the tabletop: We! Want! Food!

The second is even harder to explain.

To meet its conditions one must be underground (at least thirty feet), pretending to be engrossed in a doomed chess game while grasping and casting aside the long seconds between each boastful smile sunsetting across her winged companion's face.

One must make all the incorrect moves, recklessly giving over pawn after bishop after rook, forcing her opponent to circle over to the enemy side of the board and explain the rules in painstaking detail (as if Bella wasn't the one to teach the game to Rose in the first place), a hand light on the back of one's neck, threaded through her hair and gently squeezing when she notices one's eyes drifting from the pieces.

One must unconvincingly feign ignorance underneath a silver gaze and blustery whisper: You think you're funny, don't you? Not quite smiling yet but close- and this is important, in order to shake even the slightest shred of surveillance from the mind, one must make one last fatal move despite the guidance and warmth from her thin fingers in her hair. One must essentially die on the battlefield, a clear stomp on the pressure plate of a bear trap in broad daylight and smile, boldly.

Nine times out of ten this results in the entire board getting swept away by an imperceptible flick of a wing (paper board fluttering down a swift zigzag path, game pieces skittering all over the damp floor), a strong arm looping beneath her ribs and hauling her upward a good twenty feet until her nose is barely an inch from the smooth cavern wall. Rose, holding her tightly around the waist keeps them level with steady wingbeats, whispers against the shell of her ear something like You weren't even trying. To which Bella usually just shivers, all thoughts of ships and sussurating black cloaks evaporate from her mind. For a while, at least.

There's a certain undeniable thrill in these short bursts of flight, but if it were merely the new altitude, simply asking Rose would do the trick. No need for the affected cluelessness. Still, as she's been collecting the patterns of everyone around her, Bella's been carving a few of her own into those few quiet hours she gets with Rose in the early morning. This is one of them.

Somewhere beneath the headrush, in her heart she knows quite plainly that it's never had anything to do with flight. But for the soft look on Rose's face when they return to the ground, a hand lingering a few seconds more on her waist, motionless save for the silver phosphorescing around her pupils. It always feels like she's about to say something but never quite can.

.

.

A few weeks later, Eldensmouth's customary chill descends like an iron fist. Her father predicts the coldest winter on record is about to blow in like an unwelcome guest.

Bella swallows nervously as she cuts through the trees, branches bending around her arms as she makes her way in the deep darkness of the late autumn morning. Her hands feel clammy clutching her notebook, the heavy basket hanging from her arm rocking with the intensity of her stride.

In her head, she rehearses- Look, I don't want to get your hopes up too high, but… I think-

Hi, Rose. I might have discovered a way-

I'm keeping my promise-

Rose, on Wednesdays James-

The frayed attempts stack in her head as she slips past the snoring guard at the entrance to the tunnels. In the mornings it's usually just Jasper and old sleepyhead who's never been a problem. Bella's actually never seen him awake let alone chasing after her with his issued dagger.

Just outside the chamber, Jasper's preoccupied this morning. It looks like he's clearing out his guardpost, shoving everything in a big shoulder satchel. He doesn't even hear her approach.

She walks right up to his oblivious back and taps his shoulder. "Hail Satan."

He jumps and whirls around with a handful of Alice's letters in one hand and a poorly folded map in the other. The surprise melts off his face lightning-quick and gets replaced by his usual careless smile. "Hey, kid. You're early." He shoves the map into the satchel, but his eyes are nailed to hers. "You've been early a lot lately."

She clears her throat. "Uh, can I have the key?"

He lifts the chain from his neck and drops it into her open palm, careless smile adopting a slightly mortifying hook end. "Sure thing."

.

Rose's hand snakes through the gap in the door as it swings open and hauls Bella inside by her wrist. Before Bella has the chance to even take the jaw lock off, Rose drags her to the pile of blankets in the center of the chamber and darts around to dim the lanterns to a soft glow.

"What's going on?"

"Shh," Rose hisses into the metal lock, then winces.

"Come over here so I can unlock it already," Bella says, unable to help her smile. Once she sets the lock aside, she rests a gentle hand along the line of usual bruises down her jaw. "What are you so excited about?"

Rose holds her hand up and bends her wrist back slightly, their agreed symbol for lie down. So Bella does as she asks, and gasps the second her back hits the lumpy pile of blankets.

"Rose!"

The entire ceiling of the chamber is glittering with tiny white stars, clusters, and constellations that match the ones in the Sky Guide Bella brought down here months ago and even a few that don't. It almost looks like they're outside on the most perfect night Eldensmouth has ever seen.

Beside her, Rose glows, proud and maybe a little breathless herself.

"How did you do this?"

She simply holds up her hand again revealing a layer of chalk dust like a glove. Bella snagged some of Esme's chalk a while back- she's always looking for new things to show Rose.

"It must've taken hours."

"Yes." Rose lies beside her, wings folded carefully behind. "It's beautiful. Almost like I remember. Do you like it?"

Bella's hand finds hers on the blanket, chalky and entwined. "I love it so much I want to carry it in my pocket."

Silver eyes roll, but Bella can tell she's flattered by the way she snuggles closer to her arm.

Beautiful as it all is, there's hurt in it too. She can just imagine Rose up there, peering through the hole Bella fell through all those years ago, but unable to fit through it. Barred from freedom by just a few feet, she created her own outside.

Bella props herself up on her elbow and gazes at her friend whose head turns at just the same second. Their eyes catch and hold, understanding warping the air between them.

"You've done it," Rose says, unmoving.

"I think so." She doesn't dare reach for her notebook. Not when the slightest hairline movement could shatter the magic of the lowlight and the stars above. Sometimes it feels like her bones are magnets pulling her to the metal threaded through Rose's eyes, her wings, the hollows of her collarbones. Maybe all it would take is a stiff wind to break down her resistance.

Or Rose's hand light on her chest.

Like now, for example, as Rose leans over her, shallow breaths puffing across her vulnerable throat. Her heart runs away as Rose's mouth ghosts her cheek. Bella's hands spasm and clutch at the hand over her heart causing Rose to laugh lowly, the rare sound drilling down each and every one of Bella's overworked nerve-endings. The decibels collect in her head like always, threatening build and blot out her control, but Rose seems to know how much the human can take before the pull sets in for real. And even more than that, Bella trusts her, quite fully.

A clatter from the other side of the door disintegrates the moment. Rose sits up straighter. "Is he part of your plan?"

"Who? Jasper?" Bella says, blinking, a touch delirious- a distinct ringing in her ears. "Yes, of course."

Rose frowns and tilts her head, listening. "He collects his things."

"Who?"

"Jasper."

"What do you mean?"

Rose curls her fingers into the soft fabric of Bella's shirt and pulls her closer, eyeball to eyeball. "He said goodbye. Today."

Dread collects and snowballs in her stomach. All those letters… "Are you sure?"

Rose nods.

.

.

"You're leaving," Bella says quietly with her back to him. She replaces the bar across the door and rests her palm against the cool metal.

"Looks like it."

She turns her head. "But Rose- how will I- But she's- And you're-"

Jasper stops her short with a hand on her shoulder. "Look, I get it. Our little deal we got going is working, but you understand, I have to get out of here. Any chance I get, you understand, right?"

Of course, she understands. Last year, they added a great deal to his duties when his father passed. With no remaining family on the island, the Brotherhood is more than happy to work him into the dirt. He's held onto this guard shift for as long as he could. But all those love letters were really escape plans underneath the ink promises of devotion. It wasn't going to last forever, any of this.

It still feels like the ground's been ripped from beneath her.

"Yeah," she mutters. "But how will I-"

"You'll figure it out. I know you will. I'm sorry." He nods once, resolute. "I've watched you two over these years. You move together. Sometimes I think you talk in your heads, it's the only explanation. Plus," Jasper says with a faint chuckle, "old Blackeyes loves you so."

Bella clips his arm with her elbow. She glares at him, the blackcloak, the coldblood, her friend. "Damn you," she says without heat, "and your mainland girl."

Jasper ruffles her hair. "Damn you, too, kid." He turns to leave but stops short and pulls the knot free from his chest. The cloak slides from his shoulders, and with a smooth sweep of his arm, he catches the dark fabric and grasps it in a fist, holding it out for her to take. "You'll need this," he says. "Trust me."

Chapter Text

Winter 1891

A gloved hand rises over the misted sea cliffs, clear command within the line from shoulder to spearing fingertip. A ship tosses about in the thinning fog. Only one on a cold and broken night.

Rosalie turns her head away, jaw aching relief from the clamp, wings bent together and roughly bound. Her fingers dig into the ratty blanket beneath her legs. Anything to distract from the lifeblown gold swirling about the troubled masts. A beautiful sight seen only through the film of mercury. The sunshine thread of a beating heart; the bronzed corrosion of her pull; the crimson death that follows.

"You would do well to obey, little bird. I don't have all night."

Her throat tightens, holding the song at bay. It begs to come out, it's what she was born to do. Sing, she tells herself. And not the other word that she has so painstakingly stricken from all of the wonderful books Bella has given her, all the poems, and dreams like murky sighs upon a cold glass window.

"Suppose I make it worth your while?"

She turns sharply from him, chin pressed hard into the wet metal bars, and imagines oily scales and briny rot spilling from his dark mouth. The strain on her wings is becoming impossible to ignore.

"No?" He circles the cage, hand sliding along the bars until he comes to a stop directly in front of her. She looks not at him or his own gold that never seems to waver no matter how loudly she screams- but through the vague shape of him. He bends his head down next to hers, voice sharp against her bruised skin. "I could always force you."

She closes her eyes, pictures waterfalls and tricks of the light. She thinks of the girl who crash-landed inside her own personal hell. The way the gold danced above her head, a torch in her darkness, a sure sign of a strong heart and a stronger mind.

The priest looks off in the distance, blind to the light show of lives aboard the ship. "Do you think you're noble, resisting the call? My family has been blackening souls and feeding the Devil for centuries. She made you, your whole flock- your life, your purpose isn't what you think it is. I know the Devil," he says, and she knows the sand she is homesick for is made of crushed bones. "I know her mark when I see it."

Evil. Just like in all the storybooks. That's what her kind is, isn't it? Beautiful lures to a violent death, sailor's flesh torn in sharp teeth. The island of her birth, pale with bones and the husks of wrecked ships; glistening jewels of blood in the sand and screams on the horizon as a thousand wings snuff out the sun.

But this life, sealed in a prison of rock and deprivation is what comes from sparing humans. They took her mercy and ate it up, threw her in a cage and fawned over her song with plugged ears, gleeful at the droves of ships she brought to them. Ships full of treasure and food. Their crews lulled and ripe for drowning when their precious vessels slam into the rocks of Levin's Point.

Rose spits at him, she screams and thrashes at the bars uncaring of futility, driven only by cold black rage.

He only laughs.

"They say the end of a siren's song is death." He reaches between the bars and seizes the rope wound so tightly around her wings. His eyes fall toward the soft light of the village below. "Tavern's open late."

Taken aback, she looks at him then. He's smiling, he's five moves ahead and always has been. He laughs brittly and yanks on the rope. Torn feathers flutter to the floor of the cage. "Shall we give her a little concert?"

"I will kill you."

"Go ahead and try, Rosalie."

…

…

6.

Wind-bitten and worn out, Bella shifts the stack of books to the crook of her left arm and raises her fist, giving the wood door three solid raps. She remembers when this house was built. When the trees were cut and interlocked, when the glass was shipped in from the mainland. Her father helped lay the roof and often brought her along to watch the little cottage come to be.

There are stirring sounds inside. She remembers sitting on low tree branches and watching the men work, all the while imagining that one day, she'd have a little house outside of the village just like this one with a garden and a little library all to herself. That daydream, just like so many others, is long dead and drifted out to sea with the tide.

The door opens, revealing a slightly creased and rumpled Miss Platt. With the height of the crusted snow Bella had to trek through to get out here, it's no real surprise the woman is slightly less than prepared for visitors.

"Good morning," Bella says over the impatient wind.

"Oh, Bella!" she says, brightening a remarkable degree as she recognizes her student underneath all her layers and backdropped by the blinding white snow. She opens the door wider, letting out a little heat from the woodstove. "Please come in, I'm so happy to see you, dear."

"Miss Platt, I…can't stay long." As she says it, she feels some soft place in her heart crumble. The poor woman in front of her is an amazing teacher barred from her pupils, her purpose for picking up her life and hammering it down on this jagged rock.

Bella follows her inside and pushes the door shut behind her against the fractaled teeth of winter. Miss Platt takes the books from her arm, murmuring gratitude. At least Bella assumes it's gratitude and not the strange incoherencies of a woman abandoned out here in the snow.

It's been three weeks since the Brotherhood disbanded her small school, seeing fit to establish a more structured education for the youths of Eldensmouth in the unused wing of the Buried Church. They even went as far as to hire instructors from the mainland. Like all the other students, Bella had gone down to the docks to watch their supposed new teachers set foot upon the island.

Four former college professors of some renown it seemed. It should have been exciting, except the moment Bella laid eyes on them her stomach turned sour. They emerged at once from the boat in a rigid diamond formation, shadow-colored cloaks swishing about their ankles, moving as if they were all bolted together.

They'd come from a mainland sect of the Brotherhood.

That day, Bella felt the whole world shrink to the size of Eldensmouth.

"Would you like some tea?" her teacher asks, too hopeful. Bella merely watches as she puts the kettle on the stove without waiting for an answer. She really doesn't have much time this morning, but it's certainly the least she can do for the woman who first turned her eyes upon the horizon. "How is everyone? How is your father? The Newton boys?"

Bella pulls off her gloves and tucks them away in her pocket as she nudges one of the sturdy wooden chairs from the table and sits down. "Everyone…" she starts, staring hard at the smooth tabletop. "My dad is fine. The Angel's doing well in this cold. Seems like everyone comes to visit just to stay warm. And…the Newtons… Well, we all miss you."

"I…find myself a bit lost without you all, if I'm honest. I suppose it wasn't out of nowhere." Her gaze lowers to someplace Bella cannot see. "There's always been…tension from the church, but I never thought…" She trails off, replacing despondency with a smile far too radiant. "But that's all old news, I'm sure. And how are you doing? I hope they're advanced enough for you over there. Wouldn't want you daydreaming through class."

Bella thinks of the sunlight through the red glass windows and the bent shapes it takes on across the sinister statues and spiny furniture scattered throughout the four classrooms in the church. They teach in the old language, naturally. English is strictly prohibited. They say it distracts from brilliance, a split of communication.

"It's…" Bella hesitates. She gives the woman a careful appraisal, finding her to be almost too delicate for the truth at the moment. It can be difficult to muster when adults become loose around the edges. Still, something tells her Miss Platt suspects far worse things. "We're learning at the speed of steam engines, but that's not to say everyone can keep up. I've… Well, I've started a 'study group' at the library to help some of the others."

"Of course, you have," Miss Platt says. Her joyful mask fades into true warmth as she pulls the kettle from the stove and fills two tin cups in the kitchen. She sets one before Bella and settles into the chair across from her, steam curling through the warm air. "Thank you," she says, a bit of mist over her eyes. And Bella feels it then in a quick stab. The children never found much joy in sitting through lessons, but somewhere along the way, Miss Platt had come to love them all.

Love doesn't melt like the snow. But it hurts when it's gone.

"Do you take sugar, fisherman?" her teacher asks, amused and sad and lonely all at once.

Bella tilts her head, puzzled. Then she sees the yellow brim of her hat. "Sorry," she mutters quickly, pulling it from her head and running a hand through her hair.

"What have you done to your hair?" Miss Platt asks. She does not gasp like Mr. Newton or the girls in school. It's just a question here.

"I changed it," she says weakly. Changed might be an understatement. She let Denny Newton hack it to pieces like a jungle explorer with a machete. He was too busy laughing to notice her clearing the tears from her cheeks.

"Do you like it?"

Bella shrugs. "It's not good."

Miss Platt reaches across the table and brushes a few uneven chunks away from her forehead. "If you'd like, I could even it out for you."

She lowers her chin in embarrassment but nods anyway. "Thank you."

"Why the change?"

"I had to," she whispers. She feels her skin heating up like madness.

"Had to? I'm afraid I don't understand. Wh-"

"Why did you stay here?" Bella asks abruptly. The startle that moves through her teacher's face and shoulders almost makes her regret it. But these days, while her hands still shake, her nerves could attract magnets.

"What do you mean?"

"When you moved here with your big ideas of saving us small-minded village children. When you got to Eldensmouth, walked off that ship, and you saw the Brotherhood, why didn't you run?"

"Bella, I-"

Bella flattens her palms on the table and pushes herself to her feet, suddenly hot with anger. "Why does everyone just accept them and their rules and their terror and just go on living and running a tavern or a bakery or a school as if nothing's wrong. As if hiding behind locked doors when they're on the street is something that's normal. Or losing hair and sleep over Collection Day. Why?"

Miss Platt is quiet for a few singed beats, and Bella feels a strong rush of remorse. This isn't why she came here this morning, but she is seventeen years old and still not old enough to ask questions and get real answers. But this she knows. The Brotherhood is everywhere. What place is more in need of a teacher's help than an isolated island pinned to the ground by their dark hand?

Bella sinks back into her chair. "I'm sorry."

"It's frustrating, I know," Miss Platt says gently. "To learn how to question things and see no results."

Bella lifts her head, dead tired. "They're worse than you think."

"I don't doubt that." Miss Platt glances over her strange new appearance once more and sighs. "Whatever it is that you're doing-"

"I won't stop."

"I know, Bella. Just…be careful."

.

.

Night falls in the wintertime earlier and earlier as the season wears on. By now, it's to the point where the sun is nearly gone before Bella feels truly awake. It suits her fine these days as she listens to her father bump around in the tavern's kitchen while she wets her hands and slicks back her newly symmetrized hair. She avoids her reflection while she does this. It still scares her sometimes, the sharpness of her face unobstructed by long hair.

Taking a quick step outside, she digs her heel through the snow and ice at the edge of the building and bends to coat her fingertips with mud. The men in the caves all seem to be permanently covered with the stuff. She smears it randomly across the lower half of her face, numb to the chill by now. She steps back inside and pulls on another long-sleeved shirt, smoothing the wrinkles in the mirror.

Boyish, Angela had once called her when they were much younger and flipping through poetry books in the library. Back then she was a bit embarrassed, but now she knows it's true. Otherwise, she would've been caught a long time ago.

From beneath the thin mattress, she pulls the cloak in a shadow streak of motion and pulls it over her shoulders. With the hood on, she could be anyone else- is somebody else. Somebody brave. Somebody ruthless.

Dagger secure in her boot and basket of food on her arm, she slips out the back door and disappears into the night.

.

.

The watch in the caverns has tightened up ever since Jasper disappeared. That small shimmering window of opportunity she saw in James last year is long gone. It's a miracle she was able to weasel her way into two night shifts a week. Any more than that would draw too much attention- too many of them seeing her, knowing her obscured face.

She keeps her head down as she passes the two men posted at the entrance. They grunt acknowledgment. One of them shoves a lantern in her direction. It's nearly out of oil and probably won't last another hour. If she thought the cavern was dark in the lightless morning hours, then night is oblivion.

At the bottom of the stairs, she finds Alec half asleep against the wall. He's a few years younger than her and sits two rows over in their history and literature classes at the church. She clears her throat, and he springs awake.

"Hey! About time." He smacks her shoulder as he passes to head up the stairs. "Where's Benjamin?"

She nods in the direction of the steps. Her voice is another obstacle altogether.

"Yeah, I don't blame him." He glances over his shoulder at the metal door and shudders. "Thing gives me the creeps."

She feels her hands twitch. Useless rage. It's been happening ever since Jasper left. What little anger and frustration she knew before seemed to grow to the size of her body and then some. Now it's too familiar, just beneath the skin, curling her hands into fists a hundred times a day. It took Charlie by surprise the first time she blew up on some regulars at the Angel and flipped a tray of drinks into their drunken faces.

Rose has noticed too.

On a particularly bad day, Bella had kicked one of the crates in the cavern. The oil lamp on top fell over and ignited Rose's favorite book. By the time she put the fire out, it was ruined. She must have apologized a dozen times before Rose pointed to the door. You are not you, she'd said. And it was true.

It's hopeless, don't you see?

You've given up. I don't know you.

I've tried. There's no way out.

Then be here with me. Not in the flames.

"Oh, here," Alec says, holding out the small key. "I went in to do my check earlier. It's a real mess in there. You can clean it if you want, but that's not in my job description."

Once the sound of his footsteps disappears, she removes the bar from the door and turns the big key in the padlock. It didn't take much convincing to get Benjamin to change his post from down here with her to halfway up the stairs into a little alcove perfect for napping. The priest may have added more rules and manpower to these shifts, but at the end of the day, most of these guards are just kids who are simply terrified of the winged girl and would much rather be anywhere else.

It's dark inside the cavern, air stale and motionless. In the weak glow of her dying lamp, she can make out the blankets and crates in disarray, untouched plates of food long cold and on the verge of rot clutter the ground immediately behind the door. High above, the chain of the birdcage creaks. A low growl rattles through the dead air.

Bella props the metal door open to let in more light and takes another step inside amongst the shredded blankets and splintered bits of crate and support beam. Six days, she thinks, a needle of silver through her chest. It's been six days since she was able to claim a shift. Rose has been alone.

"Rose?" she calls, setting the lamp aside. She squints up at the high ceiling, searching for the sure flash of silver. "It's me."

Swift as lightning, Bella glimpses movement out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't have time to brace herself before she's airborne and hurtling through the darkness, bracketed tightly in capable arms. Her back thuds against the damp stone of the far wall, pressed for air between solid rock and the slight yield of Rose's body. Thin fingers slide through her short hair, pushing the hood away.

"It's alright," Bella whispers as she reaches behind Rose's neck and turns the small key, catching and casting aside the lock as it falls. She cups her jaw in both hands and runs her thumbs over the bruises growing along the line of sharp bone, a small ritual that must have started years ago. "I'm sorry."

"If you were gone…" Rose breathes, an alarming graveness inside the words.

"I had some trouble getting down here, is all. I promise."

She nods, tears slipping from her eyes which seem dull with hunger. "The priest- I thought the worst."

"You haven't been eating?" She nods toward the old food cluttering up the floor. It isn't like her to skip meals, even the shoddy ones the guards throw together with little care on their way to their shifts.

Rose rubs the blotchy, irritated skin of her throat. "They don't unlock it when you are gone."

The muscles in her arms contract tightly without her permission. All these new village boys in cloaks. She makes fists in Rose's rain-damp shirt. "They let you starve?"

"Easy," Rose says aloud. Her voice is smooth, but the push beneath is apparent as the short word smothers the oil fire from her nerves. Rose places her hands over Bella's fists until they uncurl and flatten against the front of her strong shoulders.

Resigned, Bella runs a hand over her face and nods. Rose doesn't often speak to her, but when she does it usually means she's serious. The sound rings around her head for a few seconds, always strange but not unpleasant. Sometimes she wishes Rose would say more out loud.

Mind a bit scattered, Bella finds her eyes in the dark. "What were you saying a moment ago? About the priest?"

Rose goes still against her but for the small tremor Bella would never have noticed if Rose wasn't touching her so fully.

"Did he hurt you?"

She shakes her head, though spares a glance at her damaged wings. Bella runs her fingertips over a few mangled feathers. The rope. They tie it too tight. Of course, they do, what cause have they to care if their prisoner's wings snap?

"Then what is it? What's the matter?"

"He knows."

"What?" Suddenly she feels the bone chill of the cavern wall behind her. Her lantern finally sputters out, bathing them in thick, suffocating darkness. She realizes vaguely that the metal door must have swung shut.

Bella pushes off the stone and into Rose's arms once more. Together, they fall through the open space and darkness of the cave, her stomach drops as Rose carries her through the air, fast as arrows.

"He knows my name. He knows about you," Rose says into her ear as Bella clings to her, air slashing past her ears conjuring howls out of the graveyard silence down here. "He will hurt you if I do not listen, and I-" Her voice cracks apart as the wind stops for a suspended second. And then they're falling, spiraling from an impossible height just like that first day all those years ago. Bella tucks her head into Rose's chest, bracing herself for an impact that never comes.

Instead, Rose flaps her massive wings and lowers them gently to the hard ground. She takes Bella's face in her hands, eyes catching light that does not exist. Bella feels the glow all down her spine, her fingertips, deep in her stomach. "If you were gone, I couldn't go on down here. I-"

"It's all alright," Bella whispers. "I'm safe. I'm with you."

"This," Rose says, sliding her hands to Bella's black-cloaked arms, "is not safe."

She's right, Bella knows. Running around in the dark playing dress-up with the Devil's army, it's only a matter of time before something collapses. Maybe not enough time. It seems like every time she gets a lead or sniffs out a weak link in the guard, a new face dashes her plans.

"It's the only way I can see you," Bella says, straightening up. She's nowhere near as tall as Rose. Or as strong. But when she speaks, Rose listens. Always. "And don't tell me to stay away. I-" She glances down at her own hands resting on Rose's waist. Her hands flex, fingers digging in slightly. Rose's eyes fall shut. "We're too far past that. Okay?"

Rose nods just once and presses her lips to her forehead.

.

At the bottom of the stairs, Benjamin stops mid-sentence when he realizes his partner (Beau, was it? He's actually not sure.) isn't lounging on the crates or standing guard like he's supposed to. Upon a closer look, he spots the door bar tipped against a water barrel.

Curious, he lifts his lantern and peers through the metal grate in the door.

…

…

A hundred miles off the storm coast, Caius stares at the baleful and broken-up red shine of the moon cresting the highest point in the sky. The clouds grow heavier as they near the sinister rock. He thinks of young Alistair and the bloodied field notes he raced to the capital not nine months ago. There is an island, it seems. Not just any island but one suffocated with bloodthirsty cultists.

Beside him, first mate McCarty keeps a watchful eye on the crewmen on the lower deck as they flit through their tasks, humming beneath their breath as they work. He is a large man, but deceptively quick. A former mercenary and no stranger to razing civilizations to the ground.

"Not long now," Emmett says and Caius nods.

He cares little for the profit lost or the weapons stolen on the nine of his ships that went missing on routes through this small bit of sea. He may even forgive the death of the spy he sent into their clutches.

The passenger vessel, however, cannot be overlooked. His mother, brother and four young nieces returning from a trip to Veldt to see the winter sky from the breathless mountains.

Where Caius comes from, the streets are dirty, the children are sick, and the murdered get avenged. How lucky this rock is stunted in time, no guns to be found, only swords and daggers of soft metals. No military save for a string of hapless young boys playing parts in black cloaks. The real cultists will be tougher to smoke out.

Caius turns his gaze to the fleet of ships trailing in their wake.

If bloody Eldensmouth has to burn to cinders, he will find them.

…

…

In the early hours of the morning, Bella's relief comes to replace her. He's a floppy kid who yawns and stretches through their short exchange. Bella reluctantly hands over the key and keeps her head down on the way out, lest the sun bleach her disguise.

It was sort of nice for a while after Rose calmed down. Bella held her head in her lap and stroked her hair until she fell asleep, arms wrapped tightly around Bella's thigh.

Now, she's trying to calculate how many minutes of sleep she can sneak in before she has to be in class at the church when she catches a wisp of movement in her periphery. She doesn't have time to look around before something heavy comes down on the back of her head.

The last thing she sees is a thin trail of blood and the drag of her boots through white crusted snow.

Chapter Text

Winter 1891

Bleak daylight streams through the red glass windows of the throne room, tilting pink images of Satan's fall across the windswept floor. The priest reclines comfortably on the heavy black throne, disturbed only by the insistent tap of Marcus' foot in tandem with his all-around air of disapproval and unease. It sours his few minutes of relaxation before the next set of duties is to come rushing in.

"You are aware of what's coming, aren't you?"

"Through the darkest of our darkness, Brother," he muses, quoting Marcus' ever-popular midnight sermon. Royce can see the way it makes his second-in-command twitch with low-burning anger. But he won't snap. It's why he's always second, he hasn't the spine to claim his rightful place at the head of the church.

"She won't protect us. Not after all we-"

"That's enough, Marcus," Royce says, cutting him off. He's tired of the endless tirade. We've angered her. The Devil has turned her back on us, can't you feel it? "You're paranoid."

"We'll be outnumbered. They will have guns, Royce."

The priest pushes himself to his feet and towers over him. "What good are guns when their minds will melt down the back of their spines the moment they hear my bird's song?"

"The girl will not sing for you. Unless you've forgotten that last half year."

It's true, the creature puts up less of a fight when it's Marcus escorting the cage to the cliffs. And even then, they nearly lose the ships in the fog before a single note is uttered. The discovery of the Swan girl could not have come at a more opportune time. One mention of her name, and the winged demon complies through gritted teeth and hateful eyes.

"I am not worried about that."

"Royce-"

"But fetch the Swan girl yourself if you're so concerned your Devil will not see us through this…setback."

Marcus' face calcifies, but he says nothing more before he turns from the throne and stalks out into the morning light.

…

…

7.

The slippery ground pulsates under Bella's hands as she pushes herself up, ears ringing, blood on her tongue. She spits red, dazed, and unable to get her bearings as she stands.

Beneath her, the floor convulses. Alive. The thick stench of rotting meat turns her stomach. "Hello?" she calls, squinting in the darkness. "Rose?"

Suddenly, firelight floods the strange room, flaring painfully down the nerves in her eyes. She hides her face behind the bars of her arms until the surge dims slightly and her eyes adjust to the room she's in. Is it even a room? With wet walls the color of an open wound and a floor that thrums?

Bella lowers her arms to look around, gaining no clarity as her eyes trace the textured walls of the large chamber. She makes it almost a full revolution before she realizes she is not alone.

Before her stands a woman, tall and awful. Her sleek black hair moves like water in the dead air, her eyes hold no shine of the flames raging around them, and her limbs are elongated and spindly, knobby around the joints as if she's been stretched. She smiles, and Bella notices with a jolt that her long teeth are pointed.

She swallows as the floor drops beneath her feet and bounces back up, a wet squelching noise somewhere beneath the movement. They were right, she thinks. The Brotherhood was right in their hymnals, the music that spilled from the church night after night.

Hell is a beating heart.

If this is Hell, then-

A vile chorus of tortured screams swells in her ears just beyond the edge of the firelight. Bella stumbles backward into the fleshy wall. "Am I dead?" she says as her fingers slip over the bloodied muscles. "Did you take me?"

The woman laughs, and Bella can see that her chest is sunken in as if her rib cage collapsed some time ago and she's still falling within herself. "Take you? Child, you do not belong here."

"How did I get here?"

She smiles again but offers no answers as she seems to glide over the pulsing floor. As she nears, Bella cranes her neck, taking in the terrifying size of her. She must be twice her father's height, and Charlie is the biggest man she's ever seen.

The woman, the Devil, bends and plucks at the fabric of Bella's black cloak with her bone-thin fingers. Beneath the cape, she spots the bronze feather sticking out of her shirt pocket and laughs again, a wild rasping noise, like wind through charred branches. "Playing dress-up I see. Dangerous game, little one."

Bella only nods, unable to look at her in the stranglehold of her own adrenaline and dread.

"Do you think me a monster?" she asks suddenly.

"I-"

"I suppose this form… What else are you to think?" The Devil sighs, and Bella hears the sickening sound of bones scraping and snapping. She shuts her eyes and thinks of the clean flash of mercury, metal in her hands, sharp against the skin.

"There we are," the Devil says after a moment, her weathered voice coming from just a few inches above Bella's head.

Bella opens her eyes to find her shrunk to something resembling human size and shape. There is still quite a bit wrong with her, but she's so darkly beautiful it almost blinds the terror.

"I apologize. It's been centuries since I've had guests." She holds out her still-inhumanly long hand for Bella to take. "Manners die like everything else, I suppose. My name is Aro. I am the end."

"Bella Swan," she says weakly, staring at their joined hands.

"You, always you," Aro murmurs, taking in the split in her skull from the blow. "You're in grave danger."

"What?"

"You will die today, undoubtedly."

Bella feels her chest turn to ice.

"Oh, there I go again." Aro waves her hand with a flourish. "What I meant to say is you would have died today, but fortunately for you, I have bigger plans."

"I'm not dead?"

"Yes, keep up, child."

"But-"

"Shush. Now listen to me, there isn't much time."

…

…

Rosalie lurches awake on her tattered mess of blankets, heart stuttering around in her chest. The lantern is burning dimly, throwing faint curves of light on the wet stone walls. She breathes slowly, finding comfort in the vague shine of gold swirling around in the damp air above her head.

She thinks of Bella and the gentleness of her thin fingers through her hair. How the mist around her shimmers like the dawn sun over lazy waves on the pale white shores of home, so distinct, Rose can almost trace her movements all the way back to her father's tavern. The pull of the light she can feel through meters of solid rock. It isn't usual, but she's grown to rely on it.

She searches for her now, hoping she's someplace close. Maybe walking through the woods with her old schoolteacher or collecting shells on the icy beach to add to Rose's small collection lined up on a thin ledge twenty feet above their heads.

With a bit of concentration, she finds her, someplace close. She smiles as the shimmery mist thickens and swirls around the room, almost as beautiful as the girl herself.

Relieved, she stretches and removes the top of a water barrel to wash up. The lantern burns out as she splashes some cold water over her face, but the mist is bright enough to wash by. The water drips from the jaw lock, now rusted with age and permanent exposure to water.

As she's drying her arms on the front of her shirt, the mist dims suddenly, plunging the cavern into heavy blackness. She calls upon it, focusing hard on Bella, her smile, the line of her shoulders, the size and shape of her standing just beside her. Sometimes the mist fades when her mind strays, but after a moment she realizes that it's still there. She can feel it brushing across her cheeks.

Tiny flecks of silver light up and vanish within a strange writhing mass of black mist that's eating away the weak sunlight from above. Golden life, the looming threat of bloody corrosion and red death. Tracing Bella's line has kept her alive down here. But this is wrong. She feels it now, tight around her throat as the darkness churns all around her.

Her heart kicks up. She flies to the vent in the rock and squints up at the slate-gray sky.

Mother has eaten her.

…

…

Emmett McCarty watches as Alistair washes the girl's blood from his hands in the black ocean water. They've been clean for at least half an hour, but ever since his partner vanished on this hellish island, he's been feverish and paranoid.

The girl stirs against the rock Emmett propped her up against after Alistair dragged her down here from the cliffs. She's been in and out of consciousness, mumbling nonsense for the past few minutes, but it looks like she's about to come to.

"They don't take girls," Alistair mutters, scrubbing his hands wildly. "She's not one of them."

"Maybe they do now."

"Unlikely. She's one of the village children, she works in the tavern. I saw her on my mission. She looked a little different back then, but it's her."

The girl inhales sharply. Her hands fly to her head, still bunched in the back cloak that is much too big for her. She groans in pain and rocks forward, dribbling blood on the silver sand.

"Don't scream," Emmett warns. "We just need information, and you'll be on your way."

Caius sent them ahead of the fleet on a rowboat to find the most direct line to the priest's whereabouts. They don't have much time before the fleet pierces the fog and begins the assault.

The girl's head snaps up, her eyes are black and almost without whiteness. She pants, looking around as if lost in her own backyard. Emmett's hand falls instinctively to the holster at his hip.

This is no girl.

Alistair turns from the water to join them, stopping short just a few feet behind Emmett, horror stricken across his young face. "It can't be."

"What is it?"

He stalks forward and grabs the girl's limp arm, pulling back her sleeve to reveal a distorted version of the church's crest pulsing upon her wrist. "The girl is Devil-bitten."

"What does that mean?"

"I read it in their texts. With this mark…" He drops her arm and stands again with a smile that ripples with vengeance. "She is the key."

…

…

A mother and her two children slip quickly back into the store they had just come out of as Marcus passes by on the cobblestone road. Not for the first or hundredth time he regrets the bent trajectory of his life after a string of weak-minded abnegations opened the throne to Royce King.

The villagers have always been curious and wary of the men in black cloaks. Perhaps even fearful for their lack of understanding, but never terrified. Never angry behind well-made locks and the fogged glass panes of storefront windows, narrowed eyes tracking the line of his movement until he is gone and it is safe again.

Strange business, that brotherhood.

But not dangerous. Not to common men. Not to passenger vessels. Certainly not to young girls who run wild with long feathers poking out from their trouser pockets.

If he had only grabbed onto what was his with both hands. What was handed down to him from his father and his grandfather before him. But he faltered. He thought himself unworthy, unprepared, too young, too inexperienced. Royce took his place with no hesitation, only an iron grip and a nose for the opportunities beyond.

Perhaps a stuttering midnight sermon would not have been such a terrible price to pay for the Devil's favor. But it's much too late for that, and as Marcus turns the corner toward the tavern, he sees the forest of masts in the distance just beginning to break through the fog over the sea.

There isn't much time.

The tavern is not yet open, but the door is always unlocked this time of year so anyone who needs it can get out of the cold. The owner is kind that way. The people of Eldensmouth generally are.

A few people are gathered around the fireplace at the back wall. They watch curiously as the black cloak strays from the expected path. Some movement in the rooms behind the bar assures him that the tavenkeep's in, and sure enough, Charlie Swan comes ambling out a few seconds later drying a glass with a checkered rag.

"What can I do for you?" he gruffs at Marcus without so much as looking at him. Instead, he busies himself behind the counter, sparing a few glances toward the small group huddled around the warm glowing fire.

Marcus thinks of the vision that the Devil gave him this morning, the fleet of ships that will pour out hundreds of men armed to the teeth. The brutal tear of bullets through bodies black-cloaked or otherwise. And Royce beside the birdcage, one girl within and another outwith. He decides there's no point in doing this gracefully.

"Your daughter is Isabella, yes?"

He slows his rifling. "You one of those teachers?"

"No."

"Then I don't-"

"Is she here?"

Mr. Swan visibly stiffens and turns, floorboards creaking under his weight. He is a large man, weathered and strong from many years at sea and even more spent building sturdy homes on this rock. Marcus knows that he is a gentle man, but he will not spare tolerance where none is due.

"I will not waste your time, I am trying to warn you. They will come for her."

"What do you mean come for her?"

Marcus hardly understands it himself, but somehow the girl has managed to get herself wrapped up in the siren girl. She worked her way into the caves, maybe years ago. She's kept the winged girl alive much longer than even Royce had accounted for. Just a little village girl like so many others. But her bond with the creature has made her more valuable than vanished gold, practically another key to that barbaric jaw lock.

"You answer me, or I swear I'll-"

"Please, I-" Marcus starts. "You've no reason to trust me, but I swear to you, your daughter is in danger."

Mr. Swan relents if only an inch and glances down the short hall past the bar. "She's usually back by now," he mutters. "I haven't seen her all mor-"

A sudden blast smothers the windows and rocks the small tavern on its foundation. Marcus lurches into the bar, ears ringing. The bottles on the shelves tremble violently, threatening freefall as the tavernkeep reaches a big hand out to steady himself. The men around the fire tumble to the floor, hollering in surprise.

"What the hell?"

"You boys okay? Charlie calls out to his customers getting only a few disjointed mumbles back. "Sounded like-"

Behind Marcus, the door bursts open and bangs against the wall with the force of the coughing man's entry. Marcus can't get a good look at his dirty face in the haze.

"The beach is taken!" he yells, winding his arm in a frantic follow motion. "Charlie, we gotta move!"

He lowers his head and charges back outside into the dust and smoke and vague shapes of fleeing villagers. Activated once more, Marcus shoves himself to his feet.

"You!" he shouts at the tavernkeeper over the disorder. "Get Mr. Waylon to ready his boat. Gather as many people as you can. You need to get out of here."

"My daughter-"

"Go! If she is with them, only I have a chance to get through."

"I'm not gonna take the word of a cultist."

In another life, Marcus could've bent the whole world from that throne room. In this one, he can only gaze through the fog. Just another missed oblivion. He adjusts the cloak on his shoulders and nods once. "Your daughter is more capable than either of us understand."

…

…

Eldensmouth is burning.

Bella's vision takes on a gray hue. She blinks and shakes her head but it does not leave her. It shines almost like false sunlight through ocean mist. It's brightest near Levin's Point.

She hears screams nearby that only seem to swell as her captors pick their way through an alley, Mr. McCarty's strong hand wrapped around her arm. Her classmates' homes are crumbling and smoking as she passes. She recognizes the ornate leg of the Newton's dining room table from her childhood games beneath it. Now it's little more than ash.

Somewhere a baby cries.

The explosions never slow.

Bella closes her eyes against the hot embers of misery. It's just like hell, she thinks.

The Roaming Angel is more or less standing, but empty she's sure. She refused to keep going until Emmett swept the place and swore he found no dead. Her mind is a crowded, clotted thing. She can barely keep a single thought straight.

Her father, he's a resourceful man. Maybe… She thinks of old Waylon and his boat on the far side of the island. She prays.

And Rose.

Overcome with dread, she bends over and vomits on the street. It's black and squirming like the new veins in her wrist. She wipes her mouth uneasily.

Mr. McCarty stops to let her catch her breath. "Are you alright, kid?"

Alistair glances over his shoulder at them. "We need to get her to Caius."

Emmett squeezes her arm gently to get her moving again. "She's just a kid, a scrawny sick one at that, what could she possibly do against the Brotherhood?"

Alistair laughs cruelly. "You truly don't understand. With her at our side, the cultists won't just kneel. They'll die at her feet if she so much as asks."

Bella swallows, forcing her mind to clear. Whatever has happened, this may be her only chance. These men are not exactly her enemies. They want vengeance, that much is clear. Maybe they can keep the priest busy with their revenge while she sneaks down to the cliffs… Maybe they can-

Alistair looks back at her sharply as if she'd spoken the shell of a plan. She hears Rose's words from years ago tremble on the bizarrely hot winter wind.

No one ever gives you a chance.

The strangers turn their gaze to Buried Church and begin a steady march, a tight diamond formation all their own.

…

…

Please, he had said. Please get in.

Rose pulls the worn fabric of her dress beneath her legs against the stinging cold metal bottom of the cage as the cart rolls slowly in a direction clearly opposite from Levin's Point. The permanent clouds capping Eldensmouth now swirl with dirty smoke, and just through the leafless trees, she can make out the orange glow of fires rising.

She had been sick with worry and unable to sleep at all when the explosions shook the very rock around her. It was like nothing she had ever experienced. It went on and on until the much closer grind of the cage's chain as it lowered into her chamber interested or terrified her more. Little else has made sense since then. Save for this cage and the vaguely familiar sounds of gunshots she faintly recognizes from the futile attempts some of the about-to-be wrecked ships made to silence her.

The old wheels of the cart struggle through the snow as they creep toward the village. Perhaps the single black cloak pushing it would account for that. It's strange not to have a dozen of them surrounding her and trying to keep their eyes and minds anywhere else.

It is the conflicted one who pushes her now. The one who constantly eyes the locks and rests his fingers indecisively on the keys. The one who has done nothing for her. Just like all the rest.

But he had said please. And he came alone. And as they turn onto the bloodied main street, he whispers that she should close her eyes. In an old act of defiance, she keeps them open. What she sees through the old sheet concealing most of the cage stirs dreadfully in her heart.

The town she can trace step by step through Bella's stories lies in burning ruins. Old stone buildings are toppled over, storefronts face her blackened, glass burst outward from internal infernos, bodies black-cloaked out otherwise lie in the gutters.

She conjures the mist, searching fiercely for Bella in every direction, finding her easily somewhere far from her usual paths. It's puzzling, but relief still floods her until she relaxes her searching gaze and finds the golden shine in the air lacking. It feels deadened, a version of the silver of her own eyes with a black shine.

Rose lets out a confused breath.

It's just how she remembers Mother in a torrent of soot-colored fog.

.

.

You will have one chance. That is all I can do.

He speaks to her. Rapidly in a hushed whisper that she can hardly discern. She wraps her hands around the bars of the cage and leans in closer to try to read his lips. It frustrates her, even amidst the destruction outside and the chaos all over the island. She so misses the practiced clarity in Bella's voice with every word she shared in that chamber.

I'm sorry.

She bristles slightly and he shakes his head. He says more but it's all lost as he looks over his shoulders fearfully.

She struggles to piece together his paranoid words until he turns the key in her jaw lock but gently pushes her hands away when she tries to remove it.

Not yet, she understands from his solemn gaze.

…

…

It's an odd congregation.

One half in singed black cloaks, the other reeking of powder and speckled with blood. Some appear confused whether or not to lower their heads in respect or scoff. On both sides. If there were a clock in the room, everyone would be staring at it. Better that than the tangled crest on the wall.

When Emmett and Alistair escorted her inside long moments ago, the Priest's enraged tirade in the face of the mercenaries' clean commander came to a sudden halt. He recognized her, even through all she had done to her appearance. He knew.

The mercenary commander did not appreciate the teenage girl flung at him by two of his trusted men, but he did not question them. He knew nothing of her condition and just continued to seethe. The only remarkable thing about him to Bella was his rage. How it had become all there was to him, swallowed him, and brought him here.

Now, Bella shifts uncomfortably beside who can only be Caius, the reason for all of this. Her wrist stings like nettle. It nearly makes her eyes cross.

The Priest stands from his throne and smiles like the world holds no secrets from him.

And then the double doors leading to the sanctuary burst open.

Bella's heart turns.

.

.

As the cart rolls to a stop in the throne room, Marcus pulls the sheet from the cage and prays for his soul as the air vanishes from the room. The wings flash in the torchlight as the sheet drops and Bella feels light-headed as Rose stands, beautiful and awful. The mercenaries and cultists balk alike.

There is no getting used to her.

When Rose sees her, she leans heavily against the bars of the cage, tears in her light-trap eyes. The cart rocks with the force and the closest mercenaries draw their weapons on instinct.

Blind to the sea of weapons pointed at their chests, Bella reaches out and takes her hand.

.

.

"All of them?" Rose whispers.

Bella nods slightly, gravely. All around them, these men seem to be discussing who deserves to be delivered to the Devil first. She can scarcely hear a thing over her own heart.

But what she knows to be true is this: The Brotherhood has a nameable evil and greed. Caius and his private military set out for vengeance, but in doing so, they have killed and destroyed her home. Who knows how many people were killed in the pursuit of the Buried Flesh? Varying shades of evil. Everyone here.

You and I are included if we do this. Rose says, seemingly inside her head. It's unmistakably her voice. Puzzled, Bella looks down at her wrist, the knot of dark lines.

"We have to," Bella says, cheek burning against the cold bars of the cage. "I love you, I'm sorry."

"Oh, enough of this!" the Priest says, stepping past his would-be decimator to snatch Bella away from the cage. But right before his hand can close around her arm, he freezes, a strangled groan escaping his lips. He drops to his knees in front of her, locked in pain from no visible source.

Alistair laughs, an odd note in the deathly silent room, and when Bella looks up, she notices that he's shaking. He addresses the incapacitated priest. "You took an oath, did you not? Whether or not you held up your end of the deal, Satan is your master."

The priest struggles to stand for a few long seconds but cannot. He can barely breathe let alone command a room. The veins in his neck bulge as he speaks. "She's a child!"

"She's got the goddamn Devil in her. You cannot touch her."

Caius lifts his hand to call Alistair off. "After I tear you and your followers limb from limb, Mr. King, I will ensure this never happens again. I will drown your singing creature, detonate your island, and smother any trace of your life and legacy from this earth. And when I am done, I will kill your Devil girl," he says, gripping Bella's arm harshly, "and I will bury her in the scorched ruins of your precious church."

Bella's hand falls limply from where Rose drops it. She only has time to see the girl exchange a look with Marcus before he throws the cage door open. The jaw lock falls free.

The room fills with illusory light.

.

.

Bella's eyes float upward to the flames eating the rafters as the familiar shine of brown wings unfurl and stretch fully, so large they scrape the walls with their span, freed for the first time. Rose's warm palms clamp over Bella's ears as she eclipses the flames and screams.

The stained glass windows shatter, exploding red glass in every direction. Fissures climb up the stone walls. All around them, cultists and mercenaries collapse, the wax melted from their ears, skulls split, nerves ripped into open air. A young mercenary fires at a screaming cultist twice before turning his gun on himself. Cultists gore their knives into the closest flesh they can find. A stray few manage to wrestle a door open and throw themselves out onto the bloody streets.

Anything to stop the wretched melody.

Bella watches the rapid mass expiration of nearly every soul in the room until Rose sweeps her wings around her to block out the horror in the safe cage of her body. She places her hands against the straining muscles in Rose's neck and she ends it all.

When just two souls remain, Rose's hands slip from her ears. She breathes heavily for a moment, shaken. Bella brushes her pale hair from her cheek and whispers her name just once.

Rose's eyes open and hold Bella's briefly before her strong arms circle her middle. They burst through what's left of the glass of Satan's fall and soar far away from the ashes and bluing bodies of Eldensmouth.

…

…

Royce King runs headlong as he has not since boyhood. A ship. A goddamn rowboat. A floating barrel. Anything to get him off of this godforsaken rock.

The beach is ravaged- the docks no longer exist. The husk of the village he ran through to get here… it all reminds him of something just beyond his reach.

Discordant chaos, he thinks almost bewilderedly, as the Devil prefers.

He sprints down the beach praying to her just one last time.

High above him, he hears the rustle of feathers.

…

…

The priest slams into the heavy stone wall of the empty sanctuary. He writhes as she draws a vile note taught to her on the bone sands of her birth. He feels his ears obsessively, checking for the wax plugs that crumbled at some point during his flight across the village, over the pews, and into the tarnished pulpit.

Rose has not stretched her voice of her own accord since early childhood. Despite the hot blood and gunpowder on the wind, this breath she takes tastes sweet. And she will take more.

She feels her snare in his mind between vile thoughts, the push and pull of his sanity in her hands alone. She could make him do anything.

She glances at the dagger held loosely in her right hand. Surely, Bella won't miss it too terribly with her new blood, her dark hand. Her heart hardens slightly at the thought. Her soft, strong Bella caught in Mother's trap. But she is safe. Nothing will ever hurt her again.

The dagger glints, catching the false light from her wings. It brings her back to this moment.

The priest's eyes widen as his gaze jumps from the weapon of her hand to the one of her throat. She bites her note. In the silence that rings around the cavernous sanctuary, she can hear bits of red glass falling to the stone floors like tiny needles of rain.

"What will she think of you if you do this?" he spits at her. For all his unyielding power over the young men and citizens of Eldensmouth, his voice shakes.

Rose considers his paper-thin words. "You are lucky that I am not her."

"What?" His hands scrabble at the rubble and red glass beneath him as she quickly nears.

Rose lowers her chin and grabs hold of his black cloak. "My girl would have you suffer long years in the dark. But I am impatient, you understand. I will settle for this."

She lifts the borrowed dagger bearing its unholy crest in this unholy place. There is no ceremony or marching uphill ritual in the way she brings it down with all her might, its thin blade bending as it drives into his sternum with concussive force. The priest gasps. His hands fumble, cut panicked ribbons of themselves around the blade.

There is no goading for song or bloodshed as she pries it free and lifts it once more, shock in his dark eyes, half her might this time. The warped blade melts between his ribs and sinks home into the soft give of his human heart. She lifts it again, nearly blind with rage. A third time, not for justice. Just the wet spray of blood across her cheeks. The fourth only reminds her of home.

After the fifth, she turns away from him and weeps.

…

…

Spring 1891

Look for me.

Bella twists the long feather between her hands as Waylon's beloved Tresserhorn bobs in the fairly calm early morning sea. When she boarded the ship all those weeks ago she was relieved to see that despite the carnage in the streets, Waylon and her father managed to save nearly everyone.

Miss Platt shoots her a weary smile as she wraps a fresh bandage around Charlie's burned arm and shoos away his protests.

Across the deck, Mike and Denny are shoving each other into the railing. Cheery as always despite all their blood, bruises, and burns.

Unharmed herself, Bella's eyes barely leave the stark blue sky and wobbling horizon, searching each cloud, checking every wave. Those who weren't close to her watch her curiously. She's always been an odd one, that's for sure. They've known her all her life, but there's something off about her now. Not her butchered hair and scattered attention and bouts of rage, but something else. They are wary, but they are relieved that she is here with them.

At least, that's what her mark tells her.

A large shadow crosses the deck and puts it out of her mind completely. Instead, she feels her pulse race and trip over itself, clumsy thing.

Several people scream and dart below deck as the winged girl descends, but Bella's heart is full. She leaps up from her bench, book abandoned and arms outstretched. Rose sweeps her off the deck and holds her close as they spin off into the clouds.

"You found us!" Bella shouts over the wind howling around them as Rose carries them up and up and up.

"Of course," Rose says, her eyes squinted just slightly.

Bella shivers. They're up so high. She doesn't have a coat anymore, but this is the best she's felt in years. She rests her head against the front of Rose's shoulder. "I missed you."

.

.

The citizens of Eldensmouth scream once more as Rose returns her to the deck. Rose rolls her eyes, and Bella laughs. Just a little. She runs her thumb over Rose's wind-bitten cheek.

"They've never seen anyone like you. They're frightened."

"Good," Rose says simply before turning and heading for the railing.

"Hey, where are you going?"

Rose looks over her shoulder. "It doesn't end with them. There will always be…"

"Rose-"

"I need to find my mother."

Bella feels the familiar sting of tears. "Please, please stay." She wipes uselessly at her eyes with her sleeve. She feels almost twelve years old all over again. Powerless. All those years in the cold and dark, fighting for this moment. "I don't want to be apart."

Rose turns and catches her face in her hands, stormy eyes serious. "I am chasing death itself."

"Then I will follow your trail of blood," she says, resolved once more. She holds her heavy gaze. Unafraid.

Rose's lip trembles. She slides her fingers into Bella's short hair and kisses her in the warm sunlight. Her tears fall freely as she clings to Rose, terrified as her eyes fall shut that she won't be there when they open again. But Rose is warm and wrapped around her in only the way she can. "You can't leave me," Bella breathes against her cheek.

"You're my whole heart," Rose says softly. Aloud. Her voice pulls them closer.

Bella tightens her fingers around her wrists and tips her head back to catch her silver eyes. "I will find you, I swear it."